


I Knew You Were Trouble

by RosePond



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:54:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 171,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosePond/pseuds/RosePond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>COMPLETE!!! ^_^ (Can someone tell me how to change the button at the top to reflect this? I can't figure it out...)</p>
<p>What do you do when the man you're in love with refuses to see you the same way? If you're Rose Tyler, you don't give up so easily...</p>
<p>I've been traveling with the Doctor for two years and given up my life for him. So much lost, yet so much gained. Still, he doesn't really *see* me. One day, after a commonplace adventure, an ancient enemy of the Doctor's resurfaces, one that sends him running *away* instead of toward. I want to be there for him, but he's determined to keep me as far away as possible. </p>
<p>(This story is rated M in certain chapters. I'll post a warning when such content is about to occur.) Rose/Ten</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Ok, so this is my first ever attempt at a Doctor Who fic. That said, I hope you enjoy the story! :)**

**~OOO~**

                -Chapter One-

 

Shwiiiiiiiiing! Thunk.

“Duck!”

“You could have said that a second earlier! That one nearly got me!” I dropped down behind a rust-colored rock the top half of which was already crushed from some previous assault, bending over to rest my hands on my knees and try to catch my breath. Seconds later a tall, thin, man in a blue suit and long brown overcoat dove in beside me and I turned to glare at him. “This is your fault, you know.”

“My fault?” he gasped out, pulling a thin cylinder with a glowing blue top from the inside of his suit jacket, then lifting it an inch over the top of our temporary shield to buzz it at the charging aliens closing in on us.

“Yes, your fault!” I snapped, finally pulling in enough air to get my bearings. “If you hadn’t wondered off to inspect the—what did you call it again?”

“The Thoryxis Polarium,” the Doctor put in, turning around and peeking over the top of the rock with the sonic screwdriver clutched in his hand, “which is perfectly harmless and on display to the general public, including visiting dignitaries, which I am!”

“If you say so,” I muttered, moving up beside him to see what was going on. About a dozen semi-humanoid creatures with red skin and scales, pushing seven feet tall and armed with bows and arrows that looked liable to sheer body parts off in a single arc, were blocking our path to the TARDIS. I slid back down behind the rock. “But visiting dignitary or not, you just haaaaaaaad to touch it, didn’t you?”

The Doctor turned back to me with a sheepish grin on his face. “You know me, Rose Tyler, flashy lights, mysterious ticking noise? Moth and flame, as you humans like to say.”

I rolled my eyes at him but felt a smile tug at my lips despite my annoyance. He was right; I really should have expected it.

Shwiiiiiing! Thwack!

The Doctor yanked his head back behind the rock just as the top half exploded in a shower of pulverized pebbles and dust. I shrieked and the Doctor turned wide eyes on me.

“Right. We’d best be going now, Rose. I’ll send an apology note to their Queen later.” With that, the Doctor grabbed my hand, pulled me to my feet and dashed out from behind the crumbling stone, sonic screwdriver held out in front of us as we emerged.

“Doctor….” I said warningly as the crowd of red-scaled warriors, thrown off for a split second at the pure stupidity of our two-person suicide charge into the heart of their battalion, gathered their senses and started to aim. “Maybe you should have thought this through a little longer—eeek!” An arrow narrowly missed my left shoulder and I nearly lost it. “Doctor!!”

“Nearly there, Rose,” he called over his shoulder, pulling me behind him at a steady run. “I can see the TARDIS right behind that big one!”

“Which ‘big one’?” I demanded, stumbling as I tried to keep up. “They’re all three feet taller than us.”

The arrows continued to fly at us, but none hit their mark. That probably had something to do with the sonic waves saturating the air around us, tilting their trajectory off though. Once we cleared the ‘big one’ in our path the Doctor yanked on the TARDIS door, pulling it wide. I bolted past him, tumbling into the police box and racing for the stairs that led up to the console. I paused at a _bang_ behind me, turning back to see the Doctor skid into the TARDIS and slam the door closed, quickly securing the lock.

“I said I was sorry!” he yelled through the window, panting for breath. His apology was met with a smattering of thuds as the warriors loosed a volley of arrows into the TARDIS’ front door. The Doctor turned to face me, looking a bit ruffled. “Highly sensitive race, the Galgori are; probably shouldn’t visit for a while.”

I couldn’t help it. I burst into laughter. After a moment the Doctor did too, and I grinned at him as he hurried up the ramp to join me at the console. “It’s never just a quiet excursion with you, is it?” I giggled, and he raised an eyebrow at me as he started up the TARDIS, pausing with his hand on a lever.

“Now, Rose Tyler, where would the fun in that be?”

**~OOO~**

That was how life was with the Doctor. A blaze of excitement, rashness, danger and opportunities that I wouldn’t trade for the world. Back home I had Mum and our flat, and Mickey, though how those two put up with me when I disappeared for weeks on end was beyond me. I knew it had put a strain on Mickey and my romantic relationship, so a few months back when I’d returned home for a visit and Mickey had shown up for our coffee catch-up date with a girl from work in tow, I hadn’t been completely surprised. He’d walked me home that evening after putting Jessa in a cab, and explained that he just couldn’t wait around for me to remember his existence any more. He’d moved on.

I’d wanted to be hurt, to cry and rage at him for not even having had the decency to wait to break up with me when I was on the same planet as him, but I knew it wasn’t fair. I didn’t have a right to a broken heart over this when it was my fault we were over.

So now I had mum at home and the Doctor as my best friend. Mickey and I were slowly becoming mates again, but the same closeness wasn’t there. We were friendly, but it felt more like an acquaintanceship than a friendship. Still, I thought I might look him up when the Doctor dropped me home this time.

I was still pondering my complicated life when there was a resounding BOOOOM and the TARDIS jolted unexpectedly to the left. With a yelp, I tumbled off the jump seat, hitting the floor and rolling across it into the base of the console. The TARDIS was shuddering around me, shaking so hard I had the absurd feeling of being trapped in an earthquake—which was supremely discomforting when one remembered that we were currently hurtling through space. Recovering my senses, I reached up and latched on to a strut that jutted out from under the console proper, holding on with both hands so that I wasn’t flung across the floor and over the edge of the landing when the ship lurched brutally to the opposite side and then twirled like a top for several long seconds.

Somewhere in the background I could hear the Doctor shouting “What? WHAT?!” in total surprise as he skidded back and forth in front of me, his long arms smacking at buttons and levers every time he passed within reaching distance of the console.

“Doctor?” I managed, my legs swinging across the floor like a pendulum while I clung to the strut. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on!” he shouted back at me as he sailed past, slamming into the railing and then flinging himself forward onto the console and clinging to a pair of levers with both hands.

“What?” I echoed back up at him, now swinging back the opposite way and nearly sweeping the Doctor’s feet out from under him as I passed. “What do you mean, ‘nothing’? Did we intercept a space hurricane or something?”

If he could have managed to roll his eyes at me amidst the current chaos I think he might have. Instead there was a chorus of beeps as the Doctor smashed various buttons and the TARDIS shuddered again.

“I mean NOTHING!” he yelled back at me. “We’re in the middle of the Beta 5 Nebula; no one lives in the Beta 5 Nebula. You pass through the Beta 5 Nebula. You fly around the Beta 5 Nebula. And you want to know why—?”

Despite rocketing back and forth beneath the console I still managed to roll my eyes. I’d forgotten that the Doctor became repetitive when he was agitated. Above me, the Doctor was finishing his rant.

“—because there is NOTHING IN THE BETA 5 NEBULA!”

And then the TARDIS stopped moving.

With a yelp of surprise I lost my grip on the strut and slid out from under the console just as the Doctor finally looked at me. From my place on the floor by his feet, I shot him a saucy grin. “Well somebody’s out there. Let’s go say hello.”

For two seconds the Doctor just stared down at me, and then his face split into a wide grin. “Rose Tyler, you took the words right out of my mouth.”

**~OOO~**

I climbed to my feet and shook out my limbs, checking to make sure I hadn’t injured anything during the TARDIS’ tantrum. The Doctor was already halfway to the doors by the time I’d assessed no permanent damage, sonic screwdriver held aloft. I hurried to join him and together we opened the doors and slowly stepped outside.

We’d arrived, or perhaps more aptly, crash-landed, on some sort of planet or asteroid made of a purplish rock with little vegetation. Mostly our surroundings looked like a desolate wasteland of half-eroded mountains. The atmosphere must have had a certain percentage of oxygen in it, since I could breathe, but the air felt heavier than it did on Earth.

The Doctor raised the sonic and bleeped it at various rocks and the air in general, pausing now and then to frown at something or other before moving on to inspect something else. I followed behind him more slowly, casting my gaze around the jutting rocks and wondering if we were really as alone here as it seemed.

Almost as soon as I’d given thought to the idea, there was a commotion on a rocky crag in front of us. The Doctor looked up immediately, eyes alert, and then slipped the sonic into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and he strode quickly to my side.

As we watched, a pair of what I assumed to be guards, emerged from somewhere behind the bluff and began to make their way toward us. I eyed them as they drew closer. They looked almost human, which happened in many places the Doctor and I visited and I’d ceased to find it as disconcerting as I once had. The Doctor had once explained to me that over millennia interspecies genetic warping had caused many spacial races to resemble human beings, despite their inner structures and the mechanics of their bodies being far from it. He’d also told me that that was one was one of the reasons that Time Lords looked so human; more so than most non-earth races. It was, he’d said, due to their natural and constant ability to interact with the human race in all its various states of existence that had caused their genes to evolve until they resembled us in nearly every way, two hearts and superior intelligence aside.

The two guards had nearly reached us now and I flickered a glance at the Doctor beside me. As usual he was standing perfectly at ease, eyes watchful. When the guards were about ten feet away they finally halted and simply stared at us. Of course the Doctor took that as his cue to introduce us.

“Hello! I’m the Doctor and this is Rose. We seem to have taken a minor, rather unplanned, field trip to your planet. Very nice planet, if I do say so myself, and I have seen a few of them in my time. But that said we don’t know where we are exactly, so if you’d be so kind as to enlighten us?”

I watched him flash that manic grin he always got when faced with something new and unknown, and had to smile in spite of myself. The guards frowned at us.

“You are the Doctor?” the one on the right asked, his large hand moving to rest casually on the hilt of what appeared to be a huge machete, thrust through the belt at his waist. He narrowed his eyes at us.

I wondered briefly at the lack of laser guns and similar weapons that the Doctor and I usually encountered on our journeys, and had to question their prominence in sci-fi culture back on Earth. Perhaps the creators of those stories had only run across certain types of aliens? At that thought I nearly laughed out loud. Only two years ago I’d have called anyone who’d claimed to have met an alien completely mad; now I was lumping myself in with them.

“Yes, I’m the Doctor. Have you heard of me? Brilliant!” he grinned, hands stuffed into his pockets as he rocked back on his heels. “Now that we’re all friends, why don’t you invite Rose and me in? We’ve just been admiring your rock collection, but, you know what they say, once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all…”

The guards exchanged a look and the one who hadn’t spoken yet gave a slight nod.

“Come with us,” the first man said, narrowing slanted yellow eyes at the Doctor. “The Compound is on the other side of the mountain.”

The Doctor grinned again and marched forward, falling into step behind the guards without turning to see if I was following. That was completely like him though, getting caught up in the excitement of a possible adventure without pausing to think through the potential dangers it might involve. With an affectionate huff at his childishness I hurried after the group.

**~OOO~**

The compound wasn’t just on the other side of the mountain that we’d just trudged over, arriving at the top feeling distinctly sweaty and rather less fit than previously thought (or maybe that was just me, seeing as I’d rarely seen the Doctor out of breath or looking anything other than exhilarated after running about various terrains or ships), it was inside the mountain. There was a pair of solid-looking doors set into the side of the mountain in front of us, made out of what appeared to be a type of heavy metal similar to iron but probably full of mad, space-y properties that humans couldn’t pronounce.

The guards led us halfway down the opposite side of the huge rock pile that we’d just traversed and halted outside the doors. I hovered nervously next to the Doctor, wondering for the zillionth time how he could always look so calm when walking into the unknown.

“Doctor, are you sure we should go in there? How do you know it’s safe?” I whispered into his ear, stretching up on my tiptoes to make sure he heard me. He glanced down at me curiously.

“How will we know if it’s dangerous if we don’t go inside?” he parried my question with a wink.

“Always the danger-is-fun spiel with you, isn’t it?” I hissed back, then realized the guards had wrangled the giant doors open and were staring at us, waiting for us to follow them into the black abyss beyond.

The Doctor shrugged, then held out his arm to me like and old-fashioned gentleman. “Shall we, Miss Tyler?”

Feeling a familiar, somewhat exasperated, smile tug at the corners of my lips, I slipped my hand into the crock of his elbow. “Don’t we always?”

And we stepped into the darkness.

**~OOO~**

We followed the guards down a long corridor carved out of the stone. Countless halls branched off the sides, and each of those hallways seemed to be lined with doors. Some of the windows set into them glowed with a bright light while others were dark with disuse. The hallways themselves were a pristine white: tiled floors, painted walls, faintly buzzing lights. It gave me the feeling of being in an operating room, all overly-sterile and sanitized. I felt goosebumps break out along my arms and stepped slightly closer to the Doctor.

After walking down the main tunnel for several minutes we reached another set of doors, equally daunting, that looked to be made of some sort of wood and secured with heavy metal hinges and bolts. Our escorts parted company and pulled them open before us, leaving the Doctor and me standing in the entryway alone.

“Inside,” said the quiet guard, speaking for the first time.

“Inside?” repeated the Doctor, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Everything you need to know is inside the Sanctuary,” clarified the second guard, gesturing for us to enter.

The Doctor frowned a little at that, then moved forward into the room without further questions. I hurried to keep pace, casting my gaze around our new surroundings as I stepped over the threshold.

 _BOOOOM_!

I squeaked and jumped a little, grabbing at the Doctor’s arm and twisting around to see what had happened behind us.

The huge doors had closed, sealing us into the room.

“Doctor…” I said warningly. “I’m not overly fond of closed doors. Closed doors mean no exits.”

The Doctor spun around, producing the sonic and advancing on the doors. A quick wave of it up and down our exit route revealed that we were most definitely locked in.

“Ah, well, that’s most unfortunate,” the Doctor muttered, looking a bit put out. “Not very neighborly of them, now is it?”

“Isn’t that thing supposed to open anything?” I demanded, coming to stand next to him at the doors.

“Yes, well, the thing is, that this,” he scrubbed the back of his head with one hand and gestured at the doors with the other, still running the sonic over them, “isn’t exactly ‘anything’.”

“What is it then?”

“Er, it’s wood.”

 “The sonic doesn’t work on wood.” I repeated, stating the obvious. “It can fry the security system on a spaceship twelve galaxies away from Earth, but it doesn’t affect wood.”

The Doctor turned to face me then and I raised my eyebrows at him, planting my hands on my hips and waiting. The Doctor gave me a Look.

“Come now, Rose,” the Doctor chided. “When one door closes, what do you do?”

“Break a window?” I suggested brightly, possibly slightly sarcastic given that our current surroundings broadcast no other exits beyond the one behind us, and the cavernous room in front of us stretched off into darkness. The Doctor only gave me a patient smile.

“Only one thing to do now, Rose Tyler.”

I eyed him and watched as his face melted into his trademark excitement.

 “Let’s go exploring!”

I stared at him nonplussed for a moment, then cracked and shook my head at him, laughing. His excitement was infectious. “You win, Doctor. Let’s go!”

“That’s more like it!” He grinned at me and strode forward toward the middle of the room, sonic bleeping away.

**~OOO~**

We walked about fifty feet into the gloom before the sonic perked up like a dog on point. The small device had been relatively quiet as we’d prowled the cavern, letting out an occasional beep like an underwater sonar system, but now it was full-on crazy. The Doctor swung the screwdriver back and forth in front of us for a few seconds, looking confused, then his gaze settled on something in the dark and he clicked off the sonic, tucking it into his jacket.

“What is it?” I whispered; something about the darkness made me feel like I had to be quiet, as if my voice might disturb something that lurked in the shadows. “What did you see?”

“There’s something ahead,” the Doctor replied, eyes locked on whatever it was, and as I crept forward beside him I silently cursed my non-Time Lord vision.

We’d only gone a few paces further when I felt the Doctor go still beside me. I was about to ask him what was wrong again when he took a step backward and started to mutter to himself, shaking his head back and forth.

“No,” the Doctor whispered, and I stopped walking too. He began to back up faster, his voice rising. “It can’t be. It CAN’T be.”

It was the way his voice shook that pulled me up short. I’d rarely heard the Doctor sound truly afraid of something during my time with him. It had only ever been the Daleks that brought about that mix of terror and defiance in his words. I spun around, feeling trepidation speed my heart as I searched for signs of the emotionless, death-bent species.

I peered harder into the darkness ahead and thought I could make out something glowing faintly in the distance. “What are you going on about, Doctor?”

He ignored me, backing up faster now, wide eyes reflecting the light of the thing, the presence, that was pulsing slowly up ahead. I glanced over my shoulder at the light again, but despite moving a few more steps toward it, couldn’t make out much more than what looked like a swirling column of blue vapor, pulsing brighter the closer I got to it.

Something about the glittering blue mist seemed to draw me toward it. I felt a curiosity so overwhelming about what it was, what it might do, how I might be changed if only I could touch it, that a haze seemed to settle over my vision. The sound of the Doctor’s footsteps and muttered denials fell away behind me and I began to walk toward the light, hand outstretched like Aurora to the spindle…

“NO!”

The voice was loud and harsh in my ear and a hand clamped down hard on my shoulder, fingers digging brutally into my flesh as someone spun me around and then yanked me forward so roughly I stumbled and nearly fell to my knees. My eyes burned in the sudden darkness with an after-image of the glowing smoke, and for a long moment I couldn’t see anything. Then the hands on me gentled, catching my upper arms and holding me up. I shook my head to clear it of the strange fogginess that had overtaken my senses and raised my eyes to the person gripping my arms. I blinked hard, trying to force my vision back into focus, not liking the combination of blindness and some unknown entity grabbing at me in the dark.

“Oi!” I cried, squeezing my eyes shut and throwing my arms up to knock my captor’s hold loose. Once free, I took a hasty step backward. “What’s the big idea?”

Then my vision finally adjusted to the dimness of the room and my searching eyes settled on a face I knew. Pale in the dim light, with wide brown eyes and dark eyebrows pinched in concern, the Doctor raised his hands in the air, palms out toward me.

“Rose,” he said carefully, eyes holding mine. “It’s just me, alright?”

“Oh!” I felt a blush rush to my cheeks and was suddenly grateful for the darkness. “God, I’m so sorry, Doctor, I—I didn’t realize…” I trailed off, feeling confused again. Of course it was him. There was no one else in this stupid, great cavern besides the pair of us. The guards had locked us in and were, presumably, living up to their profession on the opposite side of the ridiculous sonic-proof wooden door.

Something nudged at the back of my mind as my thoughts caught up to the present, and I started to turn back toward the shifting blue column of light. I was seized with the desire to go back to it. I wanted to inspect it, learn about it, _know_ it on some deeper level. The Doctor’s hands immediately became like iron on my arms, refusing to let my body twist in the opposite direction.

“Don’t look at it, Rose,” he said urgently. “Don’t go any closer.” He moved his body then, so that he was standing next to me, and put an arm around my waist to guide me. Then he began to march us quickly toward the doors we’d come through, propelling me alongside him with an arm firmly around my waist, holding me against his side.

I allowed the Doctor to manhandle me back across the room without much protest. The closer we got to the exit, blocked as it was, and further from the undulating blue mist, the more my mind cleared. I felt a chill rock through my body when we finally reached the far side of the room and the blue light was lost to darkness once more. Abruptly I felt sick.

I swayed without warning, lurching out of the Doctor’s slackening grip, and stumbled drunkenly forward against the doors. I managed to catch myself before I slumped sideways completely though, and sank down to the floor of the cavern with gasping sigh.

“Rose?!” The Doctor’s voice was sharp, but it felt like it came from far away, and distantly I was aware that I was on the precipice of fainting dead away. I forced myself to draw in deep, steadying breaths, vaguely conscious of the beeping of the sonic as the Doctor yanked it out and waved it up and down my body.

I took a long moment to compose myself, taking deep breaths as my rolling stomach calmed, and the throbbing in my head faded, then I raised my head to look at the Doctor. He was standing a few feet back from me, hands clenched at his sides and his normally unruffled posture looking pinched with anxiety.

“How do you feel?” he asked as soon as I opened my mouth to speak.

“Dizzy,” I mumbled. “What happened? What was that…light?”

“The Acumen,” the Doctor answered at once, casting a glance back into the darkness as if he couldn’t help himself.

“The Acu-wha’?” I repeated from my place on the ground, never having heard the word before. My head felt almost back to normal now, but I didn’t trust my trembling legs enough to try standing just yet.

“The Acumen,” the Doctor said again, dropping down to kneel next to me and press the fingers of his left hand against the side of my head. “Do you have a headache?”

“It’s fading,” I mumbled. “Sorry I took a turn like that. I just, I dunno, felt sick all of a sudden.”

“That’s natural with the Acumen, especially for a human. Your brains aren’t meant to handle that kind of invasive power. You’re just lucky you didn’t touch it.” He was gently prodding the other side of my head now, and his cool fingers felt good against my flushed skin.

“Why?” I murmured in response, his hands felt really good and I suddenly felt dizzy for an entirely different reason. I raised my eyes to the Doctor’s face but his gaze was narrowed and analytical as he focused on examining my temples. Apparently I was alone in my sudden mood swing.

The Doctor dropped his hands from my head then, and sat back to study my face. “The Acumen is an unstable, intelligent force. It means, in human words, something like “wisdom” or “canniness”. It’s an ever-changing, ever-evolving power that feeds off the thoughts and memories of others.”

My headache had retreated into nonexistence now and my heart rate had slowed, but at the Doctor’s words I felt a chill skitter down my spine. “What do you mean?”

“Those men who locked us in here,” the Doctor nodded his head at the doors, indicating the guards outside. “They’re Acuites. They traffic in stolen memories. The smarter or more experienced a being is, the more energy, for lack of a better word, they can siphon off to feed the Acumen. That blue, foggy thing behind us.” He clarified at my continued blank expression.

“What happens to them after the Acuites are done with them?” I asked, feeling the words stick in my throat as my vast travels and experiences with the Doctor helped my mind fill in colorful and terrifying possibilities.

“ _If_ they manage to escape,” he emphasized the first word with a bleakness that seemed so at odds with his usual overzealous optimism, “most people aren’t the same. Some never recover from what was stolen from them.”

He got to his feet then, and held out a hand to help me to mine. When I was standing again the Doctor began to pace back forth in front of the doors.

“I don’t understand how they managed to hide it though. A sensory-overloading force like the Acumen isn’t exactly low-profile…” He continued to pace, talking out his various theories to himself as I hovered next to the door, biting my lip.

While the Doctor rambled, I found my gaze drawn back toward the darkness across the room, and suddenly a short conversation that had taken place between the guards and the Doctor outside floated back to me. The Doctor hadn’t had a clue where the TARDIS had crashed and yet the guards hadn’t shown a flicker of surprise at hearing the Doctor’s name. In fact, he, himself, had been pleased that the men had seemed know who he was at the mention of his name. I glanced at the Doctor as he strode past, waving his arms in the air as he muttered to himself, and realization clicked into place with an almost audible snap.

“Doctor!” I cried, stepping into his path and forcing him to stop moving. “Don’t you get it? Haven’t you realized the danger you’re in?”

He paused in front of me. “Me?” He blinked a little. “Hardly, Rose. I’m a Time Lord, you’re a human. I can handle some minor intellectual probing without turning into a zombie like you humans apparently do. If anyone’s in trouble here, it’s you. But with that blasted door being wood and thusly allergic to the sonic, and my apparently being too thick to think of a way out of here—”

“ _Doctor_.” I cut him off with a wide-eyed look of my own. “They knew who you were. Outside, when we left the TARDIS and met those guys with the swords out on the rocks, they knew your name. They knew _you_.”

I waited for him to catch on. The Doctor was constantly going on about how clever he was, but, it seemed to me, that cleverness didn’t seem to apply when the situation was directly related to himself.

“They knew you!” I insisted again, and the Doctor raised an eyebrow at me and gave me a look.

“I’m a Time Lord, Rose,” he began patiently. “I’m over 900 years old and I’ve been to more solar systems, planets and galaxies than I can remember. My name has bound to get around to a few people.”

I matched his look with one of my own. One I used when explaining things to small, slightly dim, children. “You’re…the…Doctor,” I started, and he frowned at me.

“And you’re Rose.”

I threw up my hands and looked skyward. “You just said it, Doctor. You’ve been to more places, had more experiences then probably anyone outside of your own race. You’ve seen, heard, learned more about the universe than probably anyone alive. You were there at its beginning and present at its end. Doctor,” I leaned forward and poked him hard in the chest. “Don’t you see?”

“What are you talking about, Rose?” the Doctor asked, glancing down at my pointer finger pressing into his tie, before meeting my gaze once more.

“You’re it, Doctor. They knew who you were the second we landed. In fact, the Acuites were probably the reason the TARDIS crashed on this stupid rock in the first place. They knew you. You’re the prize, Doctor, the golden boy. Who else has more to give to the Acumen than you?”

“I know.”

I blinked at him for a moment, caught off guard at his statement. “What?”

“I know I’m the one they want,” he went on. He suddenly looked deflated, as if his bluster and confidence in his own invisibility had ground to an abrupt and lurching halt. “I didn’t recognize the Acuites when we first encountered them due to a finely-honed perception filter catered to their bodies, but when I saw the light on the other side of this room I knew who they were. The Acumen can hide its presence in small quantities, but the closer you get to it the more overwhelming it is.”

“That’s why you started to back away before,” I recalled, remembering the Doctor’s reaction in the dark before I my human eyes had been able to register the light.

“I could feel it pulling at me,” he whispered, a haunted look in his eyes, and I raised my hand to place it on his arm. “I still can. And I waltzed us in here without a care in the world. Stupid, _stupid_ —” He broke off and cast an agonized look down at me. “I’m sorry, Rose. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know how to get you out of this—”

I met his eyes with a fierce look. “Get _us_ out of this, you mean.” He just gave me a self-deprecating look. “’Cause we are gonna get out of this, Doctor. We always do, right?”

When he didn’t answer immediately I had the urge to shake him. Then I thought better of it and turned to face the door. Before the Doctor had a chance to stop me I raised my fists and began to pound them against the wood.

“Oi!” I shouted, slamming my fists on the door again and again. “Oi! You lot in the hallway! Something’s happening to my friend. He’s, I dunno, convulsing or something. I don’t know what to do. Help me, please!”

“Rose, what are you—?” the Doctor started, his expression twisting from defeated to alarmed. I whirled on him with a glare, jabbing my finger into his face in a gesture of ‘shut up before you mess up my plan!’ The Doctor gaped at me in confusion, but stopped speaking for the time being. I resumed beating on the wood, ignoring the throbbing jolts of pain that jarred up my arms with each connection.

“Anyone?” I cried again, the sob of terror in my voice not entirely faked. “He’s…he’s not moving now…I don’t know what to do!”

There was the sound of running feet from further down the hall, drawing closer to the doors now, and I stopped yelling to turn back to the Doctor. He raised an eyebrow at me.

“And when they open the door and there’s an army blocking our escape?” he questioned, turning my logic from earlier against me.

“Shut up,” I muttered fondly. “This is a plan in progress.”

The Doctor grinned at me, looking more like his old self as the grinding of bolts and groaning of hinges filled the air. The doors began to open and I bit my lip, feeling adrenaline replace the odd hollow-feeling in my body. Beside me, the Doctor pulled the sonic out of his jacket pocket and held it aloft, and with the other hand reached out and took hold of mine.

“Rose Tyler,” he said around a cheeky grin, “I like the way you think.”

**~OOO~**

 

**Ok, so how was that for a beginning? :) I hope I kept everyone in-character enough. I had so much fun writing the Doctor, his personality is epic! Chapter two to follow. If you can spare it, please leave a review in the box. Thank-you! ;)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Ok, I’m back and going to attempt chapter two! Thanks for reading and I’ll try to ramp up the action a bit!**

**~OOO~**

            The doors to the stone hallway slowly opened, revealing, to my surprise, only the same two guards from before. I stood in the middle of the doorway, pale and breathing hard from my recent tirade, and blinked stupidly at them. Like I’d told the Doctor, this plan hadn’t evolved much past the ‘get them to open the doors’ phase, and my mind was complete and utter blank at what to do now I’d achieved that goal.

            The taller guard stared me down, yellow eyes narrowing the longer I returned his gaze mutely. “What is the matter, human girl?”

            I fluttered my hand vaguely in the direction of the darkness behind me, keeping my eyes trained on currently empty hallway beyond the guards. I had no idea how long my luck would hold and our escape would look this easy, though at the same time, I was still only a single human being up against two armed thugs—alien or otherwise; “easy” was a relative term.

            “I—I don’t know,” I choked out, finding it even easier, and less false, to sound like I was petrified beyond words. “The Doctor, he—he,” I cast a glance over my shoulder, as if straining to see something—or someone—in the darkness of the cavern, “I dunno…he jus’ sort of fainted. I can’t get him up. What’re you playin’ at here?”

            The two guards exchanged a look. Oh yeah, they definitely knew who the Doctor was. And they didn’t look at all surprised that he may have collapsed in their creepy chamber. The shorter guard took half a step toward me, making as if to pass me and go inspect the room.

“I will go investigate your fallen friend,” he said, face impassive. “Ragalagh will wait with you here.” I took that odd bundle of sounds to mean old yellow-eyes, who was still staring me down in the hallway, and moved closer to the second guard so that his comrade could pass me. In my new position I had to take a deep breath, working to steady the jangling nerves that had ramped up their presence the moment my mind registered the feeling of “surrounded”. I did not like having both my exit and retreat routes blocked by the Acuites.

            “We do not understand your distress, human,” Ragalagh said coolly, eying the cavern as his companion moved further in and started to scan the darkness. “The Sanctuary is a peaceful place; your friend should not be in any discomfort.”

            I nodded absently at Ragalagh’s words, moving as casually as I could manage two steps to the left and angling my body so that my back was to the wall and the entryway was clear. The Doctor was on his own now and I just had to hope that his version of a plan was a tad more thought out than mine.  

Seconds before the doors had opened he had pulled his hand from mine and moved to the side, stepping back until he was shrouded in blackness. I’d frozen up instantly, turning to follow him, but he’d gestured at me to remain where I was—potential alien army coming to greet us and all. If I hadn’t trusted him implicitly, that would have been the moment that I’d have given us both up for lost. As it was, I wasn’t feeling too confident in my defending myself against the machete hanging on Ragalagh’s hip with only my fingernails as weapons.

            “Yes, well, it was, um, quiet in there,” I hedged, fighting the urge to look behind me and see what had become of the Doctor.

            “And you felt no discomfort, human? Though your friend, the Doctor, succumbed to an unexplained fit?” Ragalagh pressed, watching my face closely.

            I bit my lip. He knows I did. He must have known that as soon as I went in there I’d be drawn to the light like a moth. I still felt a little queasy from my encounter with the Acumen; Ragalagh probably knew that even a short time with it would fell someone as weak as a human being in minutes. If my suspicions about the Acuites knowing who the Doctor was, plus being the cause of our crash on this godforsaken rock, were correct, then Ragalagh would know that the Doctor wasn’t incapacitated somewhere in the shadows. Or worse, he did believe me, and was already planning to drag me back into the Sanctuary and present me to the Acumen a second time. After all, with the Doctor downed, who would stop him? Not some puny human. Right, so if that was true, why wasn’t he saying anything?

            “No,” I muttered, finally losing the battle of nonchalance and turning my head to glance back at the Sanctuary. “I feel fine. But the Doctor—” I was cut off by a shout, followed by a sharp, sizzling _ZZZzzzZZzzz_ followed by a _thwump_ as a body hit the floor.

As one Ragalagh and I lunged toward the entrance, Ragalagh’s hand going to his sword as he crossed the threshold. The sound of metal sliding free of its casing sent a shiver down my spine and I quickened my pace, hurrying ahead of Ragalagh into the Sanctuary.

            A wave of vertigo hit me as soon as I passed the doorway, and I stumbled, catching at the wall to steady myself. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, something was tickling at my consciousness, prodding at my thoughts like swirling smoke. I twitched my head to the side like a dog shaking water off its fur, trying to dislodge the invasive feeling, then turned in a circle to try and locate the Doctor’s whereabouts. The first thing I saw was a pair of feet, lit up by the light spilling in from the hallway.

I sucked in a gasp even as my brain caught up with my heart, and I realized that the odd blue leather footwear did not belong to my time-travelling alien. Ragalagh spun toward me at the sound and spotted his fallen comrade. In the dark, his yellow eyes glowed.

            “What have you done, human?” Ragalagh demanded coldly, all pretense of civility gone from his voice as he raised his sword until it was level with my face. I took a step back as it began to crackle with an ominous red electricity. Of course, I thought darkly to myself as I went cross-eyed trying to keep the weapon in sight, it couldn’t be just a normal sword, all slice and dice and have done with it—it had to be a bloody _electric_ alien sword that would fry me even as I was chopped in half!

            “I didn’t do anything!” I said quickly, raising my hands, palms out in surrender. “I just want get my friend back—!” I broke off when Ragalagh advanced on me, feeling my heart tripping frantically in my chest. My story about the Doctor succumbing to some random fit had been flimsy at best, and with Ragalagh’s fallen friend only feet from us, diplomacy had just fled the building. I took a step back and hit the wall, startling a gasp from my throat. Panic surged in my chest and choked me; I struggled to breathe. I didn’t want to die here!

            “The Doctor,” Ragalagh growled lowly, drawing out the words, “must be in this room.” I pressed back against the wall, wondering if I had any chance of ducking under Ragalagh’s arm and making a break for the hallway, and, gaining that, the TARDIS outside. Ragalagh finally stopped moving, though he kept his sizzling weapon inches from my chest. “And since he has taken first blood and killed one of my brothers,” he went on, his pupils dilating with blood lust and his muscles tensing, “the rules of battle demand I respond in kind.”

            “He’s not dead!” I cried out in desperation, squeezing my eyes shut in terror as my body locked up from sheer panic, tensed for the coming blow. I didn’t even attempt to put my escape plan into action. It was a foolish idea anyway; no way would I make it out of this room unless Ragalagh deigned to allow it.

At my frantic shout Ragalagh halted, his crackling sword freezing midway through a blurred red arc of oncoming death. Once my brain registered that my body was not in extreme pain, I slowly opened my eyes and squinted at the huge man in front of me. Ragalagh looked impatient, and when his glowing eyes narrowed I hurried on.

“The Doctor respects all life forms, on all worlds. He does everything in his power to avoid permanent harm.”

Ragalagh didn’t look convinced. In fact he didn’t look much like he was even listening to me at all. I figured I had about three seconds before he decided that, simply unconscious brother or not, he wasn’t bothered about the death of a single human female.

“Your brother isn’t dead, I swear!”

Ragalagh’s face twisted. Ok then, he’d made his decision, and it wasn’t in my favor. I watched him draw back his sword arm a second time, as if in slow motion. I tried to see around his massive bulk, eyes straining for a last glimpse of the Doctor…just one last look…and my heart squeezed painfully when all my desperately searching eyes could make out was darkness. Ragalagh’s arm swung down through the air, dropping like an executioner’s axe, and I squeezed my eyes shut, tensing for the moment of truth— ** _ZZZzzzZZzzzz_**!

Thud.

“Rose!”

My eyes popped open in surprise and met a pair of huge brown eyes, inches from my nose. I yelped. And promptly collapsed, shaking legs and frayed nerves both deciding they’d had about enough of the overall tension.

The Doctor pulled back hastily, tucking the sonic back into his jacket. “Er, sorry about that.”

I grabbed at my chest, feeling my rapidly thrumming heart beneath my fingers and heaved a huge breath of relief. “Cutting it a bit close there, aren’t you, Doctor?” I cast a cursory glance at Ragalagh’s crumpled form as I caught my breath and forced my heart rate back into the safe-zone. “What did you do to ‘im?”

The Doctor grinned and I felt a shaky smile split my own face. “Ah, yes,” he glanced down at Ragalagh, studying his prone body with interest. “The sonic may not work on wood, but it apparently has a curious reaction to the alloys in Acuite DNA.”

A slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up in my throat. He didn’t even sound upset about the whole incident, rather the Doctor sounded delighted at his accidental discovery.

“Do you think they alerted anyone else before coming to check on us?” I asked, once I’d managed to get my slightly inappropriate giggles back under control. “Maybe now’s a good time to make a break for the TARDIS?”

The Doctor held out a hand and pulled me to my feet. Once upright, I straightened my jacket and edged carefully around the two unconscious Acuites. Looking from the bodies to the doorway, I called out a little hesitantly, “They _are_ only unconscious, right, Doctor?”

The Doctor was already at the doors, poking his head out into the hallway. At my question he turned to look back over his shoulder. “What? Yes, of course. The sonic was never programed to be a lethal weapon; they’ll recover in time, though it’s probably best if we’re not here when they come to.”

I hid a smile at his comment. _Set Phasers to stun, Mr. Spock_. At that thought my smile became a full-blown smirk, which I swallowed when the Doctor shifted his gaze to me. I wasn’t interested in having a long debate about the merits and shortcomings of Star Trek verses the “real world” if he made me explain my sudden amusement. The Doctor turned back to the hall to have a second look, then turned to face me, satisfied. “No one is coming yet,” he announced, “but you’re probably right, we shouldn’t tempt fate.”

I smacked him playfully on the arm as I joined the Doctor in the hall. “Since when has that ever stopped you, eh?”

The Doctor’s cheeky grin matched my own. “Right you are, Rose Tyler. Live in the moment, seize the day, grab the rampaging Theslitoff by the horn—”

I raised an eyebrow at him as he marched off down the hall. “Theslitoff? Don’t you mean bull? Grab the bull by the horns?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Rose. Bulls are stupid, irritating Earth animals that have a rather peevish response when one touches their horns. Likely to gore your innards and make them outards.”

I snorted at that remark. “And a Theslitoff?” I repeated, doing an admirable job of keeping a straight face as we neared the exit to the rocky purple landscape where, if luck was with us, the TARDIS would be waiting without a battalion surrounding her.

“Purrs like a kitten with one stroke down the fifth horn on the back of its neck,” the Doctor replied, pausing at the exit to the outside world to peer around with surprising caution.

“Oh the fifth one, I see,” I quipped, breathing hard as the Doctor judged the landscape safe to cross and began to lead us back up the rocky hill we’d climbed on the way to the compound; somehow it seemed steeper on the second pass. “What happens if you stroke the fourth one by mistake?”

The Doctor stopped hiking to give me a look that could only be described as incredulous. “No one touches the fourth horn, Rose. Not unless you fancy a few less fingers, maybe only one leg.”

“Oh, of course,” I drawled in response, rolling my eyes when he turned his back to resume hiking, “how could I forget that the Theslitoff are touchy about their fourth horns?” The sarcasm was only halfhearted though, I was too out of breath from climbing.

We finally reached the top of the hill I privately thought was masquerading as a mountain, and I spied the TARDIS still lodged in a pile of rubble near its base. The old time machine was alone and unguarded, thank goodness, and together the Doctor and I began to pick our way carefully back down the rocky slope toward it.

It was only when we reached the battered blue police box, and the Doctor opened the door to let me inside, that the weight of the last hour began to settle on me. Every step I took across the floor, up the ramp, and past the console until I dropped onto the jump seat, seemed to take more effort. Collapsing onto the rickety chair, I felt a shiver seize my body, shuddering down it from my shoulders to my toes. When I lifted my head to scout out the Doctor’s location in the TARDIS, I found him standing at the top of the ramp, watching me with a serious expression.

“Wha’?” I asked tiredly, absently rubbing my hands up and down my arms to ward off the goosebumps that had risen with the shiver. “Why’re you lookin’ at me like that, Doctor?”

Wordlessly, the Doctor strode across the metal grating that served as the TARDIS’ floor until he stood directly in front of me. Then he reached out and drew me up so that I was standing very close to him. Still without speaking, he folded me into his arms, pulling me against his chest, arms sliding around my waist as his big hands began to rub gentle circles on my back.

For a long moment I stood frozen, my arms drawn up in front of me in surprise, my fingers curled into fists from a tension that I’d thought had faded upon reaching the safety of the TADIS. My head fit perfectly beneath the Doctor’s chin, and he tucked me closer, resting the side of his face atop my hair. Finally I managed to whisper, “What are you doing, Doctor?”

Without releasing me, he murmured back in a surprisingly solemn tone, “I believe Earth custom dictates that, in such situations as what we’ve just encountered, comfort in some form is usually required to alleviate stress and discomfort.”

I shifted a little in his tight embrace. “Huh?”

I felt his quiet amusement rumble through his chest where my ear was pressed against it, and then he simplified his statement. “A hug, RoseTyler, only a hug. You looked a bit worse for wear after our meeting with the Acuites, are you feeling better now?”

Was I feeling better? I thought about that. Less afraid for my life, yes, but better? My mind focused on the gentle sensation of the Doctor’s hands on my back, soothing the tension from my muscles, and I suddenly recalled the way his fingers had slid, feather-light, across my temple as I’d slumped, dazed, against the door in the Sanctuary. With that image came a return of the spike of emotion I’d felt at the time, of how good his hand had felt against my skin. I felt a rush of heat suddenly flood my cheeks, and ducked my head lower, trying to hide my face from the Doctor’s eyes. My body must have tensed in some subconscious reaction to my thoughts however, because the Doctor’s hands stilled on my back.

“Rose?” he questioned, starting to pull back, probably trying to get a look at my face.

Bollocks. Stalling for time, I nuzzled my face into his suit jacket for a moment, leaning into his chest and inhaling the scent that was him: metal and stardust and exhilaration, as I tried to get myself back under control. Where had _that_ thought come from anyway? I took a deep breath and willed the colour in my cheeks to fade as I lifted my face.

“Yeah, I’m alright, Doctor. Jus’ tired.” I offered up a weak smile as I stepped out of his arms and wrapped my own tight about my waist. “I’m just going to go lay down for a bit, ok?”

The Doctor gave me an odd look as I moved past him, heading for a back hallway on the opposite side of the console, half-hidden from view. I studiously ignored him, tilting my head so that my hair fell forward and covered my face, then hurried quickly from the room.

**~OOO~**

Inside my bedroom on the TARDIS I tried to relax. Ok, my reaction following this particular brush with danger had been different than it usually was. When we’d fled the Galgori this morning—had it only been this morning? It felt like days ago, somehow—we’d both tripped into the TARDIS amid breathless laughter, high on adrenaline and life and excitement, but when we’d strode into the ship this afternoon the atmosphere had been different. More subdued somehow. I could tell that the Doctor was worried about the Acuites; more so than he was trying to let on, so why was I so busy thinking about the way his fingers felt on my head, not to mention my back?

I wandered over to my bed, a queen covered in a pale blue down duvet. I’d decorated this room to remind me of my bedroom back home, in the tiny London flat with my mum just down the hall, and I always felt calmer when I was in here. I flopped backwards onto the bed, mind spinning. Hugging the Doctor was nothing new; I’d thrown myself at him dozens of times after getting out of one scrape or another, but this time it had been different. This time it had been _him_ who’d come to _me_.

I rolled over on my bed and hugged my pillow to my chest, thinking. He’d been quiet when we’d entered the TARDIS, more serious than usual. And though he’d taken me into his arms under the guise of concern for my personal wellbeing, I’d felt the slightest of tremors running down his body while I’d curled against his chest. Now that I’d had time to think about it, it seemed to me that the Doctor had needed to seek comfort for _himself_ more so even than he’d sought to bestow on me. Our encounter with the Acuites had shaken him. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose all my memories, or even just the memories about a specific event or person. Just the idea of never remembering Mum, or Mickey, and all our time together, sent a knife through my heart. The Doctor had seen so much in his numerous lifetimes, having that all stripped away would destroy him, leave him an empty shell. No wonder he’d been so terrified of the Acumen in the Sanctuary.

Then I sat up. A thought had just resurfaced in my mind: how _had_ the Acuites managed to latch on to the TARDIS in the first place? We’d been hurtling through the Time Vortex when we’d abruptly been yanked out of space and time and hurled down onto the barren rock that the Acuites called home, so how had they done it? How had they even known we were there? The Doctor must know. I mean, he’d figured out who the Acuites were once we were inside the Sanctuary, and had been going on about their presence being near-impossible to mask, by now he must have some idea of how they’d managed to pluck the TARDIS out of the air and plunk it down on their doorstep. I was missing something, and I did not like being out of the loop.

**~OOO~**

When I reentered the TARDIS control room an hour later, I felt physically rested, a little bit hungry, and a burgeoning curiosity about what the Doctor’s next move was going to be. I emerged from the back hallway and found the Doctor still up by the console, staring at one of the many monitors sticking out from the central tower with a lost expression on his face. I stood at the far side of console, just out of his line of sight, and watched him a long moment, wondering what it was that had him so absorbed.

“Have you taken particular exception to that part of the floor, Rose Tyler, or were you planning to come over and ask me your question sometime soon?”

He hadn’t turned, so the Doctor’s question caught me off guard. I started a little, feeling my face flush slightly from being caught staring at him. It was just that it was so rare for the Doctor to let his guard down enough that I even saw this side of him—the side that wasn’t covered in his slightly arrogant belief in his own invincibility—that I couldn’t help but hover in the shadows and take it all in. At the sound of the Doctor’s voice, however, I jolted back to myself and approached him slowly.

“Doctor, I—” I started, but he cut me off.

“You want to know if we’re in danger from the Acuites,” he stated, still not looking at me.

“Actually I—” I began again, and he amended his comment.

“You want to know if _I_ am in danger from the Acuites.”

Well, yes, that was true, but it wasn’t the question foremost in my mind at the moment. I said as much, quickly, before he could interrupt again.

“Well, yeah, but more importantly, I want to know how they got to us—you—in the first place. Isn’t it impossible to pull an object from the Time Vortex?” I’d finally reached the top of the ramp that led to the console from the back hallway, and now I shifted from foot to foot, suddenly anxious that the Doctor would avoid my question.

“Improbable, yes, impossible, no.”

Why wouldn’t he look at me? I took a step forward, reaching out a hand to touch his shoulder when he turned suddenly, making me draw back.

“You know what happened.” I stated my comment like the fact it was. The Doctor did not dispute it.

“Yes,” he said simply, and his face was so serious. I nibbled my lower lip and waited for him to continue. He didn’t.

“Doctor?” I prompted, and he turned back to the screen that had so captured his attention before I’d entered the room. I peered over his shoulder and was surprised to find that the screen was blank. No information there then.

“I have a very good theory, Rose,” he finally replied. “Possibly an excellent notion. But the problem with my idea is that I’d very much like to be wrong about it.”

I moved closer to him and hesitantly placed my hand on his back. I could feel the tension in his body. He was holding himself very still, eyes looking through the screen in front of him instead of at it.

“What is it, Doctor?” I asked cautiously.

“It’s impossible…” The words were muttered so lowly that I was sure the Doctor wasn’t aware that he’d spoken them aloud. I moved a little closer, angling around the console to try and see the Doctor’s face. He continued to murmur to himself, lost in his thoughts, and I had a feeling he may have already forgotten that I was even in the room with him. “There’s really no way for it to work unless….unless they found one….but they can’t have, they’re gone…I saw to that.”

The end of his mutterings came out in a twist of bitterness, and I tried to decipher what the Doctor was talking about. “What’s gone, Doctor?”

He turned back to me abruptly; spinning around in that erratic way that was uniquely him and always caught me off guard, even if I was expecting it, waving his finger in my face. “There’s only one thing in the universe—any universe—that could pull the TARDIS out of the time stream, Rose Tyler. One thing that would have any idea where to look, let alone how to go about the task. Or, more preciously, one sort of person.”

As the Doctor stabbed the air with his finger, punctuating each point in his rant, I backed up to avoid getting poked in the eye. Finally he wound down, just as my hips bumped into the back of the console, and I blinked at him for a long moment, my eyebrows drawn together as I tried to work out his convoluted answer. “How could any one person do that? I mean, aside from you, o’course.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at me and waited for the pieces to come together. “Is the answer not obvious?”

Obvious? How could it be obvious when the only specific details he’d given me were, well, “person”? Then my own words echoed in my head and the answer suddenly _was_.

“But they’re gone…” I repeated his earlier words, lifting my face to meet the Doctor’s agonized brown eyes. “Aren’t they?” I paused for a beat, trying to make sense of it all. “I mean, didn’t you—because you always said you were the only one and—” I broke off, the sadness in the Doctor’s eyes at my words was warring with his agitation over what he’d already decided to be truth, and I couldn’t bring myself to continue.

“I don’t know how, or when, but one of them must have escaped. There’s no other rational explanation for how the Acuites were able to trap the TARDIS.”

“They have a Time Lord…” I breathed, and watched the Doctor wince at my words. “And he’s working with them to get at you.”

The Doctor turned back to the console again and started to shove at levers and buttons, sending a shudder through the ship. I moved a few feet to the side in order to avoid getting in his way as he worked. “But why, Doctor? What does he have to gain from it all? If he wanted to talk to you, couldn’t he just contact you via psychic paper?”

“He didn’t though,” the Doctor replied quietly, finally ceasing his frantic button pressing and resting his palms against the console with his shoulders hunched. “Which means one of two things: either he’s a prisoner of the Acuites and is being forced to summon me, possibly as ransom for his own release, or simply under duress, or he is working _with_ them, for which purpose I cannot fathom.”

His voice sounded infinitely sad at either prospect and I could imagine why. If the unknown Time Lord was a captive of the Acuites the Doctor must fear his being drained as much as his personal potential memory loss, and if he was working _with_ them, well, that was a betrayal that cut deeper than if the attacking party were a stranger. I didn’t know what to say to any of that though, and so I remained silent, waiting for the Doctor to share his plan.

He wasn’t forthcoming though, which was very unlike him, and the tiny niggling of uneasiness that had been twisting in my stomach for the past few minutes began to grow. I wanted to say something, to _do_ something, anything to make that look on the Doctor’s face go away. But any speech on not worrying about it sounded false in my own ears, and any sort of gesture or touch felt meaningless. I couldn’t imagine anyone trying to tell me that it would “be alright” if a member of my family—let alone the last member of the human race long thought extinct—had suddenly appeared and was trying to have me killed, or as good as. And so I did nothing, just leaned against the console and watched the Doctor as he mulled things over in that mad head of his, neither of us saying a word.

Eventually the awkwardness of the room grew to be too much for me and I had to get out. Feeling like a terrible person, I muttered something about getting something to eat and escaped to the back hall. When I reached the doorway, I looked back. The Doctor was leaning on the railing that ran around the console platform, his long fingers wrapped so tightly about the bar at the top that his knuckles had turned white. He’d ducked his head, angling it away from me so I couldn’t see his face, but his entire posture cried out with desolation. My heart squeezed and I turned away.

**~OOO~**

The kitchen seemed further away than usual, and I began to wonder if the TARDIS was hiding it from me on purpose, trying to cajole me into going back into the console room. But then I turned the corner at the end of another, identical, narrow hallway, and the small kitchenette opened up before me. I made my way to the stove and put the kettle on to boil. The TARDIS provided a lot of things, catering to the nature of her occupants, but a kettle hadn’t been one of them—that I’d procured from a small shop down the street from my flat in London. A tiny, barely-acknowledged part of me, felt a school-girlish sort of glee at buying kitchen wear to keep in the TARDIS. It felt sort of like moving in to a boyfriend’s flat for the first time. Which, of course, was completely ridiculous, considering I had a whole roomful of things that I kept in the TARDIS, and the Doctor and I had essentially been “living together” in his ship for nearly two years (possibly longer, my mind often got confused with the complexities of time travel, what with hopping between one time stream or the other on a daily basis).

The kettle abruptly began to shriek its readiness and I pulled out of my thoughts with a start. I hadn’t realized I’d spaced out long enough for the water to peak. Removing the kettle to a cold element and turning off the stove, I went through the white-painted cupboards, searching out a pair of mugs and something sweet to go with the tea. When I opened a door and discovered chocolate-dipped biscotti in a package on a shelf though, I smiled. The TARDIS always knows, the Doctor was fond of saying, even the little things you don’t realize you want until you see them before you.

I cast a quick grin at the ceiling, “Thanks, this’ll do nicely,”—and felt the TARDIS’ approving hum shiver through the air. I’d been feeling the TARDIS more and more the longer I was aboard her. Of course, it wasn’t like the Doctor’s relationship with his ship, he’d told me once that she was like a presence in the back of his mind, that, though the TARDIS couldn’t communicate with actual words, English or Gallifreyan, their conversations were as clear and fluid as if they were both people standing in the same room. When I’d confessed to feeling a sort of “vibe” from the TARDIS on occasion myself, I’d half-expected him to laugh and deny any such possibility ever happening. But he hadn’t. He’d broken into a slow smile, tiny laugh lines fanning out around his brown eyes, and informed me that such a connection between his ship and a companion was rare, that the TARDIS must think highly of me to form any sort of bond.

I gathered the tea things together with that small smile still hovering about my lips, balancing both mugs in one hand while trying not to scald myself as the hot water burned through the clay surface of the cups, and the plate of biscotti in the other, then began the trip back to the console room.

**~OOO~**

I emerged from the back hallway a few minutes later, the return trip to the console taking a surprisingly shorter amount of time than the initial trek to find the kitchen—leading me to believe that the TARDIS had been leading me on a goose chase, for reasons unknown—and found the Doctor slumped on the jump seat, staring at the ceiling.

I approached slowly, eyeing him as I drew nearer. The Doctor lay on his back, one knee drawn up, one leg hanging off the side of the chair, both arms behind his head. If not for the look on his face—eyebrows drawn tightly together, mouth set in a tight line—I’d have thought he looked relaxed, peaceful even.

“I brought you a cuppa,” I started, trying to keep my voice soft in the silent room, but the Doctor still flinched at the sound of it. I winced. “I thought it might help you think.”

The Doctor sat up, hands moving to straighten his suit and tie as if he didn’t want to be seen looking anything less than put-together. I lowered myself slowly onto the seat next to him and balanced the plate of biscotti on my lap so that I could transfer one of the steaming mugs of tea to my free hand and pass it to him. He gave me a tired smile, but I could see the worry behind his eyes.

“Ahhh…..tea!” The Doctor grinned, sniffing deeply at his mug. “The nectar of the gods! Hot tea, iced tea, comes in a rainbow of colours and flavors, but nothing, Rose Tyler, beats a steaming mug o’ English B!” He took a long sip from his mug and I watched as his eyes bugged out and his face turned red. He swallowed hastily, then sputtered weakly, “Er, perhaps a little _too_ steaming at the moment, though?” He pulled a face and I tried not to laugh—much—as the Doctor set his mug on the floor and reached for a biscotti. He eyed it doubtfully.

“It’s just a biscuit,” I giggled, and he raised an eyebrow at me as he brought one of the long, thin Italian treats to his mouth and bit down hard on it. I winced a split second later, realizing that I’d forgotten to warn him that he needed to dunk it in his tea first.

The Doctor’s eyes bugged out for the second time in less than a minute and he pulled a face, massaging his jaw. Then he turned to look at me, raising an eyebrow as he said, cautiously, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Rose, but perhaps Jackie’s cooking lessons have left something to be desired?”

“Cheeky!” I muttered, smacking his arm and causing the offending biscotti to go flying across the console floor. “You’ve been alive for over 900 years and you don’t know that you’re supposed to eat biscotti _with_ your tea?”

“Oi!” the Doctor protested, shooting me a wounded look. “It’s not as if I spend all my time popping round to different shops and sneaking samples. How do you think I maintain my slim physique?”

I smirked at him. “Alien DNA?” He rolled his eyes and I giggled. “No, I’ve got it; it’s all that running around you do after you’ve gotten yourself into trouble! I’ve lost nearly half a stone since joining up with you, I’ll have you know.”

The Doctor’s expression changed at that, and he looked suddenly serious. I swallowed down my amusement and attempted to maintain a straight face, feeling my laughter drain away. “After that comment, Miss Tyler, you may want to follow suit.”

I blinked at him, suddenly feeling nervous. “Follow suit?”

The Doctor narrowed his eyes darkly for a second, and I swallowed hard. Then his face split into a wicked grin. “Run.”

**~OOO~**

Abandoning my tea, I shoved the plate of biscotti at the Doctor and bolted for the far side of the console with a shriek. A clatter behind me informed me of the biscotti’s untimely demise as the Doctor didn’t bother catching the plate before leaping after me.

“Don’t think you can outrun me, Rose Tyler!” the Doctor called, his converse trainers skidding across the metal floor as he pounded after me.

I managed to make it to the far side of the console, and, with the aid of some skillful maneuvering—I knew playing footie in Uppers would be useful one day—was able to keep the Doctor exactly opposite from me. “Is that a threat, Doctor?” I teased, attempting to look worthy of such a warning and failing when a giggle bubbled up in my chest.

From the far side of the console the Doctor danced first three feet to the left—I parried, skipping in the opposite direction—then three feet to the right, eyes bright and a manic grin stretching his face wide. “I save threats for real trouble, Rose Tyler; for you, it’s a gentle reminder who you’re dealing with.”

We danced back and forth again, hands slipping along the uneven console desktop, bumping into random levers and various questionable objects sticking out in odd places.

“Ohhhh….” I trilled, doing a horribly fake impression of 1950s film star, widening my eyes and fluttering my hands in the air in ‘terror’. “Somebody save me from the scary man in the pinstripe suit!” I grinned back at him, bobbing my head back and forth as I peeked out from either side of the central beacon that glowed in the middle of the console. “Doctor, you’re less frightening than my grandmother, what makes you think you’re gonna catch me?”

I was in the middle of sticking out my tongue at the Doctor before pulling my head back behind the beacon again, blonde hair swinging wildly with the motion, when the Doctor stopped moving and gave me a tiny smirk. “I’m a Time Lord, Rose Tyler,” and he held his body perfectly still, giving me the distinct impression of a cat getting ready to spring.

I peered around the beacon with one eye, preparing to run again. “So, I’m a London shop girl,” I retorted, a glint in my eyes, “you should know better than to mess with me, Mister—”

—and the Doctor snapped his fingers, causing the TARDIS to shudder and twist hard to the right, sending me shrieking across the floor and out into the open.

“Cheater!” I hollered in protest, as I sailed toward the railing flailing my arms and tensing my body for impact.

And the Doctor suddenly appeared in front of me, crossing the floor with two long strides and grabbing my out-flung hands with barely a second to spare. The TARDIS ground to a halt and I stumbled into the Doctor’s chest, breathless with laughter. He grinned down at me, both our chests rising and falling rapidly as we caught out breath.

“Surrender to my superiority, Rose Tyler,” he mock-growled into my face, ruining the effect by breaking into another wide grin.

“Never!” I insisted. “You had to fight dirty to win and you know it!”

After a few seconds he let me go, and I put on a show of grumbling loudly over his inability to “play fair”, to which he responded rather “snootily” that it wasn’t his fault I simply couldn’t match his epic Time Lord abilities. At that I snatched up one of the biscotti casualties from the floor and bounced it off the Doctor’s back, causing him to break off in the middle of listing reasons why humans just couldn’t hope to best a Time Lord at, well, anything. The Doctor spun back around, looking rather shocked at my retaliation. I smiled sweetly at him, feeling giggles start to bubble back up at the surprised look on his face: wide brown eyes, mouth gaping.

“Oops, it slipped. Must be my clumsy human aim, I was trying for your head,” I said with a fair amount of mock-contriteness, only able to maintain a straight face for about three seconds before cracking. Then, before the Doctor could shake himself out of his stupor, I raced out of the console room, laughter trailing behind me.

 

**Aaaaand I think I’ll leave it there! This chapter had a bit of a serious side in it and I wanted to leave it on a lighter note. ^_^ Thanks for reading and reviewing! I get such a happy feeling when I find a review in my e-mail, or see that someone has added this story to their favorites or watch-list. Thanks for liking it! <3 **


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello, dear Readers. We’ve reached chapter 3 and you’re still with me. Thanks for staying on even though it’s such a long time between updates; I’m doing my best to make this story flow properly. Oh, a side note for the previous chapter, a “stone” in British measurements, is about 14 pounds, so when Rose said she lost nearly half a stone, she was saying she’d lost between 6-7 pounds. Just in case anyone was confused. ;)**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 3 -

            Over the next few days the Doctor was either pensive and brooding, or overly excitable, trying to make up for it. We travelled to several planets for no other reason than distraction (well, the Doctor always claimed some important reason or other for visiting each place, but after the third “exciting and wondrous” planet of oddities it was obvious he was just trying to avoid discussing the issue at hand, and I called him on it).

            “Doctor,” I said as we trooped back to the TARDIS, waving over our shoulders to a pair of short, purple creatures who looked like a cross between a squid and a walrus, and whom the Doctor insisted made the absolute best of some type of fruit-ish dessert in the galaxy—which was surprisingly delicious and sweet, and I’d eaten far too much of it and now felt like hibernating for about a week until my stomach was able to digest it all—“Aren’t we ever gonna talk about it?”

            The Doctor waved enthusiastically at the creatures as they slithered away like giant slugs, flapping tentacles back at us as they went, then stepped inside the TARDIS with me then shut the door and leaned against it with a contented grin on his face. “Ahhhh….” he sighed, lacing his fingers over his stomach, which was trim as ever (I felt like mine was sticking out about three feet at the moment), “Nothing more filling than a Perfluvian custard!”

            I stopped at the foot of the ramp to the console and crossed my arms, waiting for the Doctor to come out of his sweets-induced stupor and realize I was serious. “Doctor?”

            The Doctor meandered toward me, eyes half-lidded and looking very much like he was about to wonder off to his bedroom—wherever that was, the TARDIS wasn’t forthcoming with that information—and take that nap that my body was longing for. When he reached me and realized I was blocking the route to his bed, he blinked and looked up in surprise, as if startled to find me standing there.

            “Talk about what, Rose?” he asked, looking confused. “If you want to know how much weight you’ve gained after gorging on those desserts, trust me, you’re better off not knowing.” He made as if to move past me and nearly made it—his comment had pulled my attention down my belly and I started examining it closely.

            “Oi! What do you mean by that, Doctor?” I demanded, prodding at my stomach experimentally. No matter how I _felt_ , my stomach didn’t look any different on the outside. I raised my head and turned to glare at him. “Are you saying I’m fat?”

            Behind me the Doctor’s shoe squeaked against the floor as he froze mid-step, turning halfway back to face me. He looked startled. At my ensuing glare his expression became cornered.

            “No, no, no, no, _no_!” he burst out, eyes wide and hands flying into the air, palms out, as if warding off a rabid dog. “That’s _not_ what I said at all.”

            I stared him down, watching him become increasingly flustered.

            “You’re a very nice size for a human female, all round and…and curvy—I mean, nicely shaped…that is, what I meant before…the sweets, they aren’t permanent…you don’t need to worry about changing shape…not that you would, at least not after eating Perfluvian custard, but the after-dinner tarts they serve on Etpas 9 I would avoid—nasty business those, all ears and tails and unusual cravings…”

            He petered off as I blinked at him, suddenly finding myself fighting the urge to laugh. I was about to take pity on him—as much fun as it was to wind him up, it wasn’t the Doctor’s fault that he was so awkward about dealing with the finer points of human girls—when I realized that his twisted ramblings had made me nearly forget that I’d been standing here for a reason.

            “Oi!” I cried again, narrowing my eyes at him, and the Doctor flinched again.

            “Really, Rose Tyler, I was not trying to make a slight against your body with that remark—”

            “No,” I cut him off, and I took three steps up the ramp so that I was standing in front of him again, glaring up into his face. The Doctor stopped talking, eyeing me as if he very much wished he could take back the words he’d said thirty seconds earlier and was possibly considering some fancy TARDIS maneuvering in order to make that so. “No,” I repeated, “not that. You’re avoiding the question, Doctor.”

            The Doctor’s face immediately became blank and his eyes shifted so that he wasn’t looking directly at me. “What are you talking about?”

            I gave him a _look_ and he held my gaze for a stubborn five seconds before cracking and turning to stomp back down the ramp. I followed hard on his heels. “You can’t run away from this, Doctor,” I informed his back as the Doctor kept moving, marching in a circle and then back up the ramp, quickening his pace as if he could shake me off by simply moving faster. “I know the TARDIS just as well as you do,” I said sternly, keeping pace as the Doctor stomped past the console and headed for the back hallway, “and seeing as you’re being so childish at the moment, maybe I’ll just ask her to lock all the doors on you until you grow-up and discuss this like a rational person.”

            Ahead of me the Doctor’s shoulders tightened but he continued to stalk down the hallway, making a sharp left at an almost hidden corner, then an immediate right, reaching out to yank a side door wide—and wrenching his arm in a rather painful-looking manner when it remained solidly shut. He stopped moving, hunching his shoulders and in all probability glaring daggers at the TARDIS as he snapped “Oh, _verrrry_ funny, now open this door!” He pulled hard again, rattling the handle, but to no avail.

            I’d caught up in time to hear the Doctor’s black curse in Gallifreyan, which the surprisingly prim TARDIS had chosen not to translate, and smirked at his back as I leaned against the wall. Very slowly the Doctor turned back around, looking mutinous. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing this time, he looked like a four year old who’d just tried to sneak into the sweets cupboard and found it child-proofed. At my amusement the Doctor glared at me, and I quickly sobered, because the situation really wasn’t funny at all.

            “Doctor, have you thought any more about the Acu—” I began, and he cut me off.

            “We aren’t discussing this, Rose,” he said flatly, giving me his best oncoming-storm glare.

            “You can’t just keep running, Doctor,” I returned heatedly, taking a step toward him in the narrow hallway. “They found you once before—”

            “I’ve been running all my life, Rose Tyler, why should I stop now?” he countered, meeting my eyes with an intensity that took all my willpower not to flinch away from.

            “Because you have me with you now,” I answered, and watched as his face fell, the hardness washing away like waves over sand.

            “It’s _because_ of you that I run now more than ever,” the Doctor replied quietly, and held my gaze until I blinked and had to look away.

            “Doctor…” I said slowly, not exactly sure where I was going with that sentence but needing to break the growing tension somehow; the narrow hallway suddenly felt claustrophobically tight. Across from me, I heard the Doctor sigh heavily, defeated.

            “Rose,” he said slowly, shoving a hand through his spiky hair in frustration before turning to me again, and my eyes flickered back to his. He looked pained. “You know what it felt like to be near the Acumen, the way it pulled at your mind and soul as if it would tear you apart like candy floss, do you really relish having any future contact with that malevolent force or any of its acolytes?”

            I had no answer for that. Of course I didn’t want to get any closer to the Acumen than a galaxy or two away, but that wasn’t really the point of this whole conversation, and the Doctor knew it.

            “And do you really relish getting swatted out of the air like a fly with no warning, _again_?” I threw his words back at him and watched as his eyes tightened.

            “That won’t happen again,” the Doctor said shortly, taking a step forward out of the alcove where he’d been standing throughout this exchange and making as if to leave.

            “Can you promise that?” I asked his retreating back once he’d made it a few steps away, and watched as he stiffened then turned slowly back around.

            “Do you really have such little faith in me as that?” he asked quietly, and the look in his eyes made me want to take a step back. He looked fierce and vulnerable all at once, and I wanted nothing more than to apologize and profess my absolute trust in all things he did, because he’d never once failed to keep me safe. But it wasn’t about me this time. It was about him; and his lack of concern for his own well-being, which was going to get him killed—or worse—if things went on this way.

            “I trust you with my life, Doctor,” I said softly, and he nodded curtly, then turned and began to stride away once more. “So why can’t you trust me with yours?” I whispered to the echo of his footsteps as he disappeared around the corner.

**~OOO~**

            I assumed the Doctor had returned to the console room by the clinks and electrical buzzes that sounded every so often, interspersed with the odd muttering mix of curses in both English and his own language, when I passed near the place ten minutes later, and knew that he’d taken to tinkering with the TARDIS’ innards, whether they needed the attention or not. In the back of my mind I was vaguely aware of an indulgent hum, which I took to mean the TARDIS was putting up with the Doctor’s fiddling like a mother with a child who wants to “help” with dinner.

I chose not to enter the room, knowing that the Doctor did some of his best thinking while working on the TARDIS, and hoped that he’d come to see reason by the time he was finished. Instead, I made my way toward the library, a room I’d discovered a few months ago after realizing that I’d exhausted all the reading material I’d brought with me from London. This room was always well-stocked with shelves of English literature, and I probably read more during my escapes here than I ever did in upper school, much to my former instructors’ dismay I was sure.

I couldn’t sit still today though; I paced around the room, dragging my fingertips lightly across the spines of countless shelves of books, barely glancing at their titles. I felt restless, just as the Doctor obviously did, only, unlike him, I couldn’t pretend to be busy “fixing” my fancy time-traveling ship—mostly because I’d likely strand us in the middle of some prehistoric time period where we’d be hunted by cavemen.

“Don’t you know that if it ‘ain’t broke’ don’t fix it, Doctor?” I muttered into the silence of the room. I wished that the Doctor could see that running away wasn’t the answer this time. If the Acumen had a Time Lord in their—its?—possession, then the TARDIS could be accessed any time it was in the Time Vortex, which essentially ought to have the Doctor pinned down somewhere until he figured out how prevent such a thing from happening again. “Because pure stubbornness won’t do it this time, Doctor,” I continued aloud, finishing my circuit of the room and hovering next to one of the couches, too antsy to sit down. “You might insist that it was a fluke, that there’s no way it could happen again, but until you know why it happened the first time—the technicalities of the whole disaster—you won’t be able to keep yourself out of danger.”

After another few minutes of pacing and ranting to myself I left the library; it wasn’t a comfort to me today, not when just down the hall the Doctor was steadfastly refusing to see the very real danger he was in. Yes, he should be playing it safe and taking a nice long vacation somewhere, maybe back on Earth—I always enjoyed our visits to the various incarnations of my home planet—where the TARDIS could remain stationary for a good piece of time, hopefully causing the Acumen to lose interest in it. I decided to return to the console room then, and see what the Doctor was up to; maybe he’d had enough time to think better over what he’d said to me in the hall and realize that I had a proper point.

**~OOO~**

The console room was empty when I arrived, and I debated whether I should wait for the Doctor here or hunt him down in whatever corner of the TARDIS he’d decided to hole up in. While I considered my options—one: try and find the Doctor when he likely did not want to be found and was probably asking the TARDIS to hide him by moving rooms and hallways around like she often did of her own accord, and like as not get hopelessly lost and end up back in the console room anyway, or two: wait for the Doctor by the console since he’d have to come back here at some point to set coordinates for wherever he was planning to fly off to next—I strode about the console platform, eyes wandering idly over the various levers and lights. I was so lost in thought that I nearly stepped directly into a wide hole in the middle of the floor in the back of the console—as it was, I let out a yelp, and only just barely managed to rearrange my footing at the last second to avoid twisting my ankle.

Upon closer inspection the hole turned out to be a hatch, a hatch that led down to the underbelly of the TARDIS where the Doctor had obviously been working. I paused and knelt down beside the hole, curious. I hadn’t been this close to the heart of the TARDIS for over a year, and even now I could feel a warning thrum humming through the air when I leaned closer. Ignoring it, I stretched out on my stomach on the grated floor and stuck my face into the hole for a closer look.

About ten feet down was a second landing, narrower than the grating on which I was currently sprawled, encircling the lower portion of the softly pulsing Central Beacon. Next to the beacon was a serious of straps and pulleys, which the Doctor probably used to hoist himself up with so he could work comfortably, and a scattering of odd-looking tools that I couldn’t name. I’d never understood why the Doctor needed tools to work on the TARDIS in the first place; I’d figured he always used the Sonic in situations that required any modifications of his time machine.

Around me the TARDIS’ hum suddenly seemed to intensify, as if she were getting anxious about my being so close, and I’d just decided that I should probably sit back and wait for the Doctor somewhere else, when there was a shout from behind me and the sound of running feet.

“ _Rose!_ ” came the Doctor’s urgent shout, and I yanked myself away from the hatch, scrambling backward and falling over in my haste—ending up looking like a drunken crab. I tipped my head backward and saw the Doctor racing toward me from across the platform, eyes wide with horror. He skidded to a stop when he reached me and dropped to his knees, looking terrified.

“Doctor, what’s wrong?” I asked, struggling to get onto my own knees in preparation for standing. My heart lurched at the panic in his eyes. “What’s going on?”

The Doctor hovered in front of me as I sat up—feeling a little dizzy from all the flailing around I’d just put myself through—then caught at my arms when I finally faced him.

“You’re alright?” he demanded, peering anxiously down at me. Then without waiting for me to answer, he took hold of my face with both large hands and turned it rather roughly from side to side, staring hard into my eyes.

I blinked at him, completely confused. “Of course I’m alright, why wouldn’t I be?”

After a beat or two more, the Doctor released my head and got to his feet, pulling me up with him.

“I’m starting to get a little concerned about you though, Doctor,” I added, frowning at him when he continued to stare at me, looking shaken.

“I just—I saw…” He swallowed hard and then continued. “You were laying there…on the floor…” He gestured vaguely, looking flustered and distraught all at once. As he peered down at me with frenzied intensity I found myself staring up into his eyes, seized with a desperate confusion. “I thought that—well, the TARDIS was sending out a signal and…” He stumbled over the words haltingly, glancing back toward the place where the hatch still gaped wide, and I suddenly understood.

“Oh…oh _no_ , Doctor, no! I’m fine. Really.” I jumped to reassure him, but he just continued to stare at me, brown eyes very wide, face pale. “I was only curious,” I hurried on, “It’s—well it’s been a long time since I’ve been near there, and I just wanted to prove to myself that it was safe this time...” I trailed off; he was still staring at me, hands clamped around my arms as if he thought I might vanish if he let go. “I’m fine, I promise, Doctor.”

“One would think you humans would be cured of curiosity by now,” the Doctor muttered darkly. “What with all the cats and all.”

I might have smiled at that comment but the situation _really_ didn’t warrant it, so I pressed my lips together tightly and did my best to look contrite.

The Doctor abruptly released my arms, turning on heel and moving to the hatch where he flipped the door closed with a clang. The entrance to the bowels of the TARDIS now lay flush with the grated flooring, and I remembered why I’d forgotten the access panel was even there until now. Watching the Doctor’s closed expression as he secured the hatch, buzzing it with the Sonic to lock it, I ached to reach out for him, thinking about how he must have felt the last time he’d found me near the TARDIS’ core. That time had ended horribly, causing his regeneration into the man I knew now.

I had asked him once how it felt to regenerate, if it hurt. He’d hesitated a long moment, until I’d thought it was one of those things that he never intended to discuss with me. Then he had turned back to where I’d been standing, and looked me straight in the eye. “It always hurts,” he’d said matter-of-factly, and turned quickly away. But he hadn’t turned fast enough for me to miss the look of pain that flashed in his eyes when he’d confessed that piece of truth to me. He could have lied, said it was like going to sleep and waking up a new man—or another variation of the lies adults tell children when someone close to them passes on—but he hadn’t, I’d seen the truth of his words in his eyes, and my heart hurt for him.

I could only imagine what he’d been thinking when he’d come back into the console room just now and seen my prone body on the floor by the hatch. If regenerating hurt as much as he said it did, I could imagine his fear over his discovery a few minutes prior. My heart gave a painful thump when I realized that his fear stemmed from the fact that he’d been willing to go through it all again, if it would mean saving me a second time.

The Doctor returned to where I stood when his task was finished, but didn’t say anything. The silence of the room pressed down on me from all sides. It had been a long time since I’d felt this awkward with the Doctor, but with the echo of our argument from earlier still hanging in the air, I only felt worse for upsetting him.

“So what were you doing down there anyway?” I asked, striving for casual as I gestured toward the hatch. “Improving perfection must be a stretch, even for you.” I felt an appreciative hum in the air from the TARDIS at my words.

The Doctor huffed, flickering a glance around the room before settling his gaze back on me, but I could see the tension draining away from him at this familiar topic.

“The old girl needed a tune-up, much as she _might insist she doesn’t want for one_.” His voice rose slightly with the last half of the sentence, and he rolled his eyes skyward. The TARDIS responded with a louder hum that my mind associated with ‘annoyance’, and the Doctor frowned, glaring at somewhere over my shoulder. “Just like a girl,” he grumbled, “Change your interior with every regeneration but complain when I want to do a little surface work.”

I laughed then, because the comment was so very ‘human’ in context, and the Doctor’s gaze snapped back to mine. “Just tell her you still think she’s beautiful,” I grinned, “and you’ll find she still loves you.”

This time I could tell he felt the TARDIS’ hum of pleasure from my statement as much as I did. He grinned.

“Ah, Rose Tyler: the TARDIS Whisperer.”

I grinned saucily at him in return, tongue poking through my teeth. “And don’t you forget it, Mister!”

We were laughing and teasing each other but I could still feel the undercurrent of the earlier tension, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Still smiling softly on the outside, I made my way over to the jump seat and dropped onto it, pulling one knee up to my chest and wrapping my arms around it. I rested my chin on my knee and peered at the Doctor as he flitted about the console, stroking various parts and crooning something in Gallifreyan which sent a purr of pleasure from the TARDIS through the back of my mind. _Flattery will get you everywhere, Doctor,_ I thought with an affectionate smile at the Doctor’s back. If only it were that easy to convince the Doctor that hiding out for a while was a viable option.

As I watched the Doctor flirt with his ship, coaxing her into allowing him to make some “improvement” or other—from my mundane point of view all it looked like was a series of frenzied lever-pushing and button-pressing—his words from earlier came back to me.

 _“It’s_ because _of you that I run now more than ever…”_

Because of me. I was the person that was putting the Doctor in danger. I’d declared to him once that I was going to travel with him forever, and the look of joy on his face had thrilled me to my core. But now I wondered if his desire to have me as a companion was the thing that was holding him back. That is, because I was “refusing” to leave him he had gotten it in his head that the only safe place to be right now was no place at all—always on the move. If he would just drop me off in London he’d have no collateral damage to worry about, but because I had insisted on staying with him he was stuck with me. On the other hand, if he had returned me to mum’s flat and gone off on his own, he’d have no one to keep him from rushing off and doing something stupid and reckless, so my staying on the TARDIS was useful. He’d confessed how dark things got when he spent too much time alone, and I could only guess at what sort of half-cocked plan he’d come up with regarding the Acumen if I weren’t here to balance him out.

I shifted on the jump seat, leaning back and pulling my other leg up to my chest. The TARDIS was humming contentedly now, and the Doctor was rubbing the back of his neck, looking relieved that he’d accomplished whatever it was he’d been doing (I found it easier not to ask too many questions when he got like this).

“—Rose?”

I blinked. The Doctor was staring at me, head cocked to one side, a strange look on his face. I had a sudden feeling that he’d asked me a question more than once and I hadn’t heard a word of it.

“Hmmm?” I asked, pulling myself out of my tangled thoughts with some effort and focusing on him.

“I said, did you want to go home?” the Doctor repeated, gripping the bottom edge of the console with his hands and leaning is body back against it. His face was serious, though his posture was relaxed, which was the exact opposite of my reaction to his question.

“ _What?_ ” I demanded, jerking my head off my knees and looking up at him in surprise. “Why? I already told you I’m fine; no naughty TARDIS glow in my eyes, now is there?” As if to prove this fact, I widened my eyes like a bullfrog and stared at him. I’m sure I looked utterly mad. The Doctor’s eyebrows drew together slightly and he straightened up.

“That’s not why I asked if you wanted to return to London, Rose.”

“Listen,” I jumped to my feet and hurried to cut across him before he could finish. “I know we had a row before, Doctor, but that doesn’t mean I want to slink back to my mum and sulk. Nor,” I added, rushing on when the Doctor opened his mouth to interject, “is it very fair of you to kick me out of the TARDIS just so you could do likewise. I mean really, Doctor, you’re being unreasonable—”

“Un—unreasonable?” the Doctor spluttered, eyes narrowing. “I don’t think—”

 But I was on a roll now. I took two steps toward him across the platform, raising my voice to speak over him. “—because it’s not that I don’t trust you; I would have thought that how very _much_ I trust you was obvious by now. I mean, just look at how I spend my days: gallivanting about the universe and poking the proverbial sleeping alien just to see what it does—I should think that shows nothing _but_ trust!”

“Rose Tyler I only—”

“—but you, Doctor, _you_ don’t seem to have any trust in me. Because if you did,” I was right in front of him now, inches from his chest, glaring up into his startled brown eyes. “If you did,” I repeated more quietly, “you’d see that all I want is for you to be safe. Going on about my faith in you…if you can’t see how I feel by now, well, maybe going back to London is the best thing for me.”

At the end of my explosive rant I just stood there, chest heaving as I tried to reign in my wildly spiraling emotions. My cheeks felt flushed from the passion of my speech and my eyes were pricking suspiciously. I simultaneously wanted to shake and embrace the Doctor, and so I did the only reasonable thing: I took a step back and bit my lip, hard, to save myself from causing any more damage than I already had.

The Doctor was blinking at me, looking completely poleaxed by my outburst, and I began to feel the tiniest bit guilty for having a go at him. Then I remembered how he had just suggested I take a leave of absence from the TARDIS and felt my chest tighten with anxiety and anger all over again.

“Rose,” the Doctor said hesitantly, as if afraid that making any sound might set me off again. I met his gaze furiously, biting harder on my lip when it gave a foreshadowing tremble. I would not cry. I would _not_. The Doctor’s expression had morphed into concern as he took in the expression on my face, and his hands hovered awkwardly at his sides—halfway extended, as if he had started to reach for me but thought better of it. “I only meant that maybe now would be a good time to take a little break back on Earth. I wasn’t throwing you out; I’d never do that, not to you.”

His face looked so anxious that I felt a wash of guilt crash over me. Abruptly unable to meet his eyes, I wrapped my arms tightly around my waist and ducked my head, feeling a burning embarrassment creep over my cheeks. I swallowed hard, fighting back the sob of frustration that had lodged in my throat during my recent tirade—I hated that I cried when I got angry.

“Please, Rose…” The words were gentle, and I felt long, tapered fingers slide under my chin and gently prod my head up. “You said all you want is for me to be safe? Well, all I want is the same for you…and right now, with the Acumen able to manipulate the TARDIS practically at will, travelling with me is rather counterproductive to that plan.”

“S-so you’re just gonna drop me off in L-London and go fight that thing on your own?” I questioned, hearing the quaver in my voice and forcing it back. “Couldn’t you just stay with me in London for a bit? Keep the TARDIS out of the Time Stream for a while so the Acumen can’t find you, yeah?”

“Rose—” the Doctor began, and I could sense an oncoming argument against my suggestion. “I don’t think…”

“Fine, not London,” I amended quickly. “Any planet will do, really, just don’t make me—” I cut myself off then, because I was suddenly aware of just how much of a whinging teenager I sounded like. I was also suddenly conscious of the fact that the Doctor’s hand was now cupping the side of my face as he peered at me with that patented _I’m doing this for your own good_ expression he was so good at.

“You know what you’re like when you’re alone, Doctor, and you could be running about for decades for all I know; all in the apparent time it takes for me and mum to have tea.” The words slipped out before I could stop them, and I felt the Doctor’s fingers tighten for a fraction of a second on the side of my face before he withdrew his hand. His eyes had darkened at my words, brown irises turning almost black, and there was a hardness about his features that hadn’t been there moments before. I felt a small lurch in my chest at his reaction and prayed that I hadn’t just caught him out.

The Doctor stepped back from me then, turned and crossed the platform back to the console. I didn’t follow him this time, but I didn’t leave either.

“Doctor please,” I said softly, when the silence in the room had grown unbearable, and he turned back to me, a long-suffering look on his face.

“Alright,” he growled, his gaze fixed somewhere over my shoulder.

I blinked at him, a little startled at his switch in tactics. “A-alright?”

“Alright, fine, _stay_.” The Doctor’s head snapped around to glare at me and he spat the words through his teeth like poison darts, eyes furious. “But when you find that staying with me ends up getting you killed, don’t say that I didn’t warn you. Because, Rose Tyler, you said it yourself: what I do—what _we_ do—isn’t safe. It’s a hop, skip and a rocket launch from ‘safe’, and it’s only going to get worse from here on out!”

I swallowed hard at this outburst, fighting the urge to take a step back at the dark look blazing in the Doctor’s eyes.

“Alright,” I whispered, echoing him, and watched his face closely as I said it. At that single word he seemed to deflate. I watched as he turned back to the controls, head down and shoulders sagging. He didn’t move. I didn’t move.

“Just go…” he said in a low voice, and I started slightly.

“W-what?”

“Go,” the Doctor repeated a little louder, shoulders tightening again. “Away. Anywhere. I need to think, so just _go_!”

His voice had risen to a shout by the end of his command and I stumbled backwards, a little frightened. I’d seen the Doctor angry before, but he’d never directed that anger at me, until now. Granted, I’d never been the cause of it before, so I really had no basis for comparison, but my instincts told me to heed his demand for the moment, and I all but ran from the room.

**~OOO~**

I fled the console room to the sanctuary of my bedroom and locked the door behind me. Then I leaned against it, closing my eyes and pressing my palms against the smooth metal. My heart was beating hard in my chest and I felt like I might really start crying now. The Doctor was angry with me. Well I was angry too. How dare he try to off me onto Earth just so he could go charging into danger all on his own? He should have known I wouldn’t go quietly.

But then…the look in his eyes when he finally caved and allowed me to stay…I felt a shiver run through me from shoulders to toes.

Pushing away from the door I crossed the room to my bed and flopped on to it. I didn’t have much furniture in my room on the TARDIS, just the bed, a couch, a couple of small tables and lamps…and a closet that defied the laws of physics. I smiled thinly as my gaze passed over that space. Much more than a ‘walk-in’, that room was; it would be a dream to have back in my flat in London. But then, reshaping spacial dimensions probably didn’t work the same way on Earth—outside of the TARDIS that is.

Sprawled on my back, I rubbed my palms hard over my eyes, breathing deeply to get control of myself. I was still here, that was the important thing. He’d said he would never force me out and he’d held true to his word…but that didn’t mean he had to like having me here. And having the Doctor feel that way, even if was ‘for my own good’, hurt.

I rolled over onto my stomach and pulled a pillow under my chin, hugging my arms around it. This wasn’t like me. Rose Tyler: sulking in her bedroom?? Hadn’t I just finished declaring to the Doctor that I wasn’t the sort of person who did this kind of thing? And the Doctor, switching moods faster than a hormonal teenage girl…I thought darkly.

“Argh!!” I groaned, mashing my face into my pillow and letting out my frustration in a muffled howl. I flopped over onto my back again, dragging the pillow over my face. “Why are you being so difficult, Doctor?” I demanded of the ceiling, and felt the TARDIS hum inquiringly in the back of my mind. “That’s right,” I muttered at the ship, voice still muffled from my pillow. “Your Master is being stubborn and putting all the blame on me. That’s a bit unfair, wouldn’t you say?”

The TARDIS hummed back with a diplomatic vibe which I could somehow tell meant she wasn’t inclined to take sides in this argument.

“Yeah, well, I still say he’s being an idiot about the whole thing.” I mumbled into my pillow. A pause, and then I grumbled, “But you’re probably also right that I could have handled the whole thing better. I did have a bit of a go at him sort of unprovoked…” A beat in which the TARDIS’s hum induced the feeling of a raised eyebrow, and I added, “Alright, alright. Completely unprovoked. Happy now?”

Pause.

Fine,” I huffed, shoving the pillow off my face and sitting up, frowning at the wall of my bedroom. “You know, you’re awfully pushy for a non-verbal time machine.”

The next hum could only be mentally translated as laughter.

With a martyred sigh I climbed off the bed and headed for the door. I hadn’t been gone very long, and part of me was on tenterhooks that the Doctor would still be in a rage over my winning the argument to stay in the TARDIS. Taking a deep breath, I squared my shoulders, yanked open my bedroom door and stepped purposefully out into the hallway—

—and smacked straight into a lean chest. I let out a little cry of surprise, stumbling backwards, and the Doctor’s hands shot out to catch me before I could trip over my own feet in my haste to back up.

“Rose—?” he said in surprise, looking startled at the fact that I’d just come charging out of the room apparently on a mission.

“Ooof!” I grunted, quickly followed by, “Doctor?! What are you doing here?” He’d locked his hands around my elbows when I’d barreled into his chest and I abruptly pulled out of his grasp, taking a hasty step back. He released me with no resistance, his expression turning closed.

A few steps back from him now, I crossed my arms over my chest and pressed my lips tightly together. I knew I should apologize, that’s what I’d set out from this very room to do after all, but now that I was suddenly facing him but I couldn’t find the right words…so stubborn glaring it was. Across from me the Doctor was watching my reaction with sharp eyes. After a long pause, he finally broke the silence.

“Rose Tyler, I…” he started, his face slightly red. He scrubbed a hand across the back of his head, avoiding my eyes. I waited for him to continue. “About just now, in the console room…”

He looked wretched. His dark eyebrows were pulled together over anxious brown eyes, and his thin lips were pursed with consternation. He looked like a kicked puppy. I could tell that he was sorry for lashing out at me and I found that I couldn’t hold onto my own anger.

“Doctor, I…” I began, uncrossing my arms, but he was the one to talk over me this time.

“No, Rose, let me finish. Please.” The look in his eyes was so intense that my mouth snapped shut almost of its own accord. I nodded. “I’m…I’m sorry, for what I said. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way.”

He was watching my face carefully as he spoke, and I gave a small nod of acknowledgement. I deserved his repentance as much as he deserved mine after all. He sighed heavily, then continued.

“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” he said quietly. “I’ve been working on the TARDIS, trying to figure out just what it is that allowed the Acumen to successfully wage an attack on her. I upgraded the H.A.D.S.—”

“The what?” I asked, breaking my vow of silence by virtue of curiosity. The Doctor rewarded me with a small smile.

“The H.A.D.S.,” he repeated. “It’s one of the TARDIS’ defenses. It stands for Hostile Action Displacement System. If the TARDIS comes under attack it will relocate itself automatically until the threat has passed. I don’t usually have it on, not very accommodating when one goes adventuring, you know…”

I felt a smile tug at my lips at this understatement. That was for bloody sure! The poor TARDIS was solidly built and could withstand many forms of attack, and did so on a nearly daily basis, what with the Doctor’s insatiable appetite for the “new” and possibly dangerous—having the H.A.D.S. enabled would have the TARDIS jettisoning off into the wild blue yonder every hour if not more often!

My softening expression seemed to give the Doctor confidence. “Anyway, what I mean to say, Rose Tyler, is that I’m glad you want to stay with me. But I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into. The Acumen—this force—it’s so very beyond dangerous and I…” He hesitated for a moment, then pushed on. “I’m not sure, if it comes down to it, that I’ll be able to fight it.”

He ducked his head, unable to hold my gaze, and I could tell what that admission had cost him. I hesitated myself, unsure, then reached out a hand to him and gently placed it on his arm. He jerked slightly at my touch, and I almost drew back, but then I noticed him slowly uncurl the fists he’d been clenching tight at his sides.

“I’m sorry, too, Doctor,” I said softly. “I shouldn’t have had a go at you like that. I jumped to conclusions. But you’ve got to know that the only place I want to be right now is wherever you are. I’ve always known that travelling with you wasn’t always going to be safe; it’s sort of part and parcel when you decide one night to jump into a blue box with a strange man and fly off into the stars, yeah?”

He lifted his head slightly, and I could see warring desires in his deep brown eyes. He wanted to contradict me and at the same time he knew I was right. I smiled sadly up at him.

“I trust you.” I said the words quietly, but with conviction, and felt the Doctor’s body tense under my hand. “I do, Doctor,” I insisted firmly. “And whatever happens, we’ll face it together, alright? The Doctor and Rose.”

He lowered his head slowly until his forehead rested against my hair. His hands settled lightly at my waist as I laid my other palm on his chest. I could feel his rhythmic breathing beneath my fingers.

“Together…” he sighed. And the word was both a promise and a lament.

**~OOO~**

 

**Whew! Made it through chapter three! Lots of angst in this one…hope everyone survived. Thanks to all my lovely reviewers for their kind words. *waves cheerily* I wonder what will happen next?**

**P.S. I don't know why sometimes the indents work and sometimes they don't. I can't figure out out to change it once it's been copied from my word document into the chapter program here. If anyone knows how, please let me know. Thanks! :)**


	4. Chapter 4

                 **Who’s ready to brave chapter four? ;) The last chapter was very emotionally up and down and difficult to write. I like writing the Doctor when he’s being silly and erratic; it’s hard to write him angry and angst-y!**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 4 -

            The TARDIS was a busy place the next few days. The Doctor had apparently decided that since I was refusing to leave he had to pull out all the stops to make his ship a safe place. I didn’t really get what more he could possible do to it than he already had—the TARDIS was near-invincible to my understanding—but since our confrontation the Doctor could be found more often than not fiddling with this or that. The TARDIS’ patience was limitless in my opinion, because if my mum had been pestering me as much as the Doctor was his ship, I’d have pitched a right fit.

            Two days after our row I was leaving my bedroom in search of breakfast and nearly tripped over the Doctor’s long legs sticking out from a ventilation shaft just outside my door. That was it, I decided, and pulled up short next to his Converse trainers.

            “Doctor?” I called, dropping into a crouch next to the ventilation shaft and tilting my head to try and get a look inside. No response. “Doctor?” I tried again, nudging the Doctor’s knee, which was the extent of his body that was still in the hallway. From inside the shaft there was a reverberating clang as something clattered to the base, followed quickly by a rapid succession of bangs and a muttered oath from the Doctor. Out in the hall his legs jerked.

            “Rose Tyler, is that you?” The words echoed slightly off the aluminum walls, followed by more clinking and a buzzing sound. I dropped to my knees and squinted into the dark space.

            “’Course it’s me, Doctor. If you were expecting someone else I’d say you have some explaining to do.”

            Clink. Clatter. BANG. The Doctor’s legs spasmed again as he shifted around in the shaft, and I could just make out the blue glow of the Sonic.

            “Well there was that one time a fledging from the Balvarion System stowed away in a heating duct. Sneaky little things, like warm spaces to sleep. They do that a lot, you know, especially when just hatched. However, sweet as the fledglings are, their parents are not very appreciative of unofficial babysitting services. They tend to throw around words like ‘kidnapping’ and ‘we’re going to destroy your ship’…”  

The Doctor’s voice became clearer and more distinct as he wriggled out of the shaft and into the hallway. He was without his jacket and tie and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to just below the elbow, a fact which revealed the way the tendons stood out along his arms as he caught at the opening of the shaft with long fingers and shoved himself out into the hallway. His normally artfully messy hair was sticking out wildly, and he had a smudge of something on one cheek. When he saw me squatting next to him on the floor he grinned widely. “Hello!”

            I smiled indulgently at him, shaking my head. “Doctor, you’re a mess.”

            He sat up and raked a hand through his hair, doing more damage than good. “Am I now?”

            I grinned and tapped discreetly at my own face. “You’re covered in dirt.”

            “What’s life without a little rough and tumble, Rose Tyler? No one who stayed at home and kept their clothes tidy ever had half so much fun as the one who sought mess and adventure!” He rubbed the back of one hand over his cheek, succeeding only in streaking dirt and sweat across his face.

            “You’re such a child, Doctor. It’s a wonder the TARDIS puts up with your constant tinkering.” I leaned against the wall and drew one knee up to my chest, laughter in my eyes. The Doctor moved to lean against the wall opposite me. His long legs stretched the width of the hallway easily, soles of his feet pressing against the far wall. My outstretched leg reached about the Doctor’s knee and I nudged him playfully.

            “Awe…she adores me!” The Doctor proclaimed, closing his eyes and patting the wall of the TARDIS with one hand. I could feel the TARDIS’ hum of ascent in the back of my mind, perfectly aligned with the contented smile on the Doctor’s face.

            “Her questionable taste aside,” I said, and smirked at the doleful look on the Doctor’s face, “you’ve been fiddling around here for days now. You need a break. _I_ need a break! There’s only so much a girl can take of tripping over you sticking out of a wall or falling from the ceiling—”

            “—That only happened once!” the Doctor protested, looking embarrassed.

            “Yeah, well you nearly landed on me!” I shot back, and he colored slightly, rubbing the back of his head. “Come on, Doctor,” I wheedled, “Let’s go do something fun!”

            The Doctor’s expression became curious. “Like what?”

            “I dunno, do I?” I said, widening my eyes at him like an innocent schoolgirl. “You’re the mad man with the magic box, surprise me!”

            The Doctor pursed his lips for a long moment, leaning his head back against the wall and looking considering. Then he abruptly sat forward, his face alight with excitement. “Oh! We could go see the Moons of Alpet! Gorgeous place to visit, Rose Tyler; the sky literally changes colors according to the temperament of those in the vicinity! You’d love it!” Then he frowned slightly and scratched the back of his head. “Except they’re not overly fond of foreigners, bit xenophobic they are…which is to be expected when your species is a race of clones.” He pondered for another minute. “What about the Charm Gardens in the Chaos Belt of the Zerilium System? They’re are a laugh and a half. Lots of trouble to be gotten into there.”

            The Doctor winked roguishly, grinning widely, and I felt my face heat up; not that he noticed. The Doctor might as well have been talking to a tree for all he paid attention to how his words affected me at certain times. Of course, knowing him, my idea of what a ‘charm garden’ was and what they actually were could be two entirely different things. I nibbled my lower lip and mulled over his suggestions.

            “What about you, Doctor?” I asked finally, pulling his attention away from whatever memories he was lost in. The Doctor turned his head toward me inquiringly. “I mean,” I went on, “Putting aside what you think would amuse me, if you could go anywhere right now, anywhere at all, where would you want to go?”

I’d meant the question as an opportunity for the Doctor to share a particular planet or people that he’d always wanted to go back and visit again but hadn’t gotten around to it, something that would mean fun _for him_ , not just me, but as soon as the question was out of my mouth I saw his face fall. The laughter faded from his eyes and the smile on his face faltered for an instant before he hitched it back into place. And I knew exactly where his mind had gone in that moment—where else? Gallifrey.

            “Doctor, I’m sorry. I—” I started quickly, but he cut me off with a forced cheerfulness that rang false in my ears.

            “Come on, Rose,” He unfolded himself from the floor, rising to his feet and holding out a hand to help me up. I took it and he pulled me easily to my feet, giving my hand a gentle squeeze before releasing me. “Let me get cleaned up and then I’ll take you out on the town.”

            His expression was carefree as always, soft smile and wide brown eyes, and if I hadn’t just watched the pain of a thousand years flash across his face I might have bought it. But I could tell the memories he constantly fought to suppress had risen to the surface at my careless comment and I wished I could take it back.

            “Doctor…”

            “I’ll only be a few minutes, Rose; you might want to change into something a little more sturdy before we go.”

            I glanced down at my outfit: drawstring sweats, an old t-shirt with Tenderheart Bear emblazoned across the front, bare feet; in short, my pajamas. “Where are we going?”

            “Somewhere that requires clothing slightly more substantial than jimjams.” And this time the grin that stretched the Doctor’s face was real.

            “Oi,” I protested, “Don’t mock a girl’s wardrobe choices. We can’t all parade about in the same two suits and still look fit.”

            The Doctor, wisely perhaps, said nothing to this, but tossed me a grin over his shoulder as he disappeared down the corridor to seek out a shower. Fifteen minutes later we convened in the console room: the Doctor, still with hair damp from his shower, dressed in his pinstripe suit, having given up the blue one to the ventilation shafts, and me in jeans, trainers, a t-shirt and a half-zipped purple hoodie.

Dropping onto the jump seat I pushed my blonde hair out of my eyes and gave the Doctor and expectant look. When I’d arrived in the console room he’d already been there, jumping around and pushing buttons, and despite the short time between the Doctor’s announcement and now, my curiosity was already driving me wild.

“Sooooo?” I queried, drawing out the word until the Doctor turned to face me. He spun around with what could only be described as exuberance, brown eyes alight with excitement, and strode toward me.

“You’re the one who ordered a surprise, Rose Tyler. Would you have me go back on my word so soon?” A smirk played about his lips and he had the look of somebody who was up to absolutely no good. At any rate, his left eyebrow was dangerously high…a warning sign if ever I saw one.

“Maybe so, but your last idea of a surprise turned out to be a trip to a planet where the locals’ idea of fun was hunting the ignorant blonde human, Doctor.” I retorted, raising an eyebrow at him in return.

“Well could you blame them? You did drink their holy water.” the Doctor pointed out, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers and rocking back on his heels, a look of barely concealed amusement on his boyish face. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“How was I supposed to know that, then?” I demanded, jumping up and planting my hands on my hips. “It _looked_ like an ordinary pond in the middle of an ordinary field!”

“The water was iridescent,” the Doctor put in, a smile in his eyes, and I glared at him.

“Well I was thirsty,” I pouted. “And anyway, someone who apparently knew better chose not to enlighten me.”

I tried to hold my glare but it wasn’t easy when I was up against the charisma of a highly entertained Time Lord. I cracked, a smile breaking across my face. The Doctor’s eyes crinkled when I smiled, and the grin on his face widened.

“Can you promise me that this time I won’t have to run for my life?” I pressed, unable to hold his gaze when he was looking at me like that. Like my smile was the one thing that he had been waiting for all day. I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear and turned toward the TARDIS doors.

“Oh ye of little faith,” the Doctor chided, sidling up beside me and slipping his hand around mine. His grip was firm and his fingers warm, and all worries fled from my mind. In fact, I was having trouble thinking of much else beyond the way his hand felt around mine. We stood facing the doors for a long moment. “We’re here now, Rose Tyler,” he said after what seemed like an age but was probably only a few seconds. “So I suppose all you can do now is take a step out the front door.” He paused then and peered down at me seriously. “Of course, if you think it’ll be too dangerous we can always stay here.”

He held a straight face half a second longer than I did and I smacked his chest with my free hand. “Right, Doctor, since when has that ever been our _modus operandi_?”

The Doctor grinned down at me, tugging at the hand he held so that I bumped against his side. “Too right, Miss Tyler.”

“Onward to mess and adventure!” I proclaimed, taking a giant step forward and pulling the Doctor along behind me. Somewhere over my shoulder I heard the sound of snapping fingers and the TARDIS doors opened before us.

**~OOO~**

            I gasped.

            I had marched boldly out the TARDIS doors, dragging the Doctor along behind me, determined not to show any surprise no matter where the Doctor had brought us or what I saw, but all those thoughts flew from my mind the second I stepped outside. I pulled up short, my jaw dropping open, and felt the Doctor move to stand beside me. He gave my fingers a gentle squeeze and murmured quietly, “Do you like it?”

            He sounded anxious, but I couldn’t reassure him just then. I couldn’t even form words. All I could do was stare.

            We were in a cave, but it was enormous. So vast that I couldn’t see the ceiling and the sound of my own intake of breath rebounded off the distant walls and back to me in the same heartbeat. Most of the massive space was taken up by an unending underground lake, the black water lapping gently at the rocky shore of the slightly off-center isle on which the Doctor had somehow managed to land the TARDIS. There wasn’t much room on the little island; it was roughly ten feet in circumference with a smooth space in the middle which the TARDIS and the pair of us now occupied. But it wasn’t the cave that took my breath away; it was what was inside it.

            Everywhere, on every part of the walls, stretching up until I became dizzy straining my eyes skyward trying to take it all in, the uneven stone surface was covered with millions of tiny glowing lights. They flickered as an air current travelled past, shifting easily from a soft blue-green into a deep purple-blue and then back again. All over the endless cave the tiny lights glowed, rippling almost musically through the cool spectrum of colors as the air passed over them. The entire spectacle was reflected on the water of the lake so that it felt like the entire room was filled with stars. The sight was so heart-achingly beautiful that I felt tears prick my eyes.

            “Rose?” the Doctor asked again, and I could feel him watching me, waiting for me to speak.

            “W-what is this place?” I whispered, my voice choked with emotion.

            “It’s called the Cave of Living Song.”

            “What’s on the walls?”

            “Luminosa,” the Doctor replied in the same low voice, and there was an answering ripple of color from the Luminosa on the edges of the little jetty on which we perched. “They’re tiny creatures that react to the vibrations of air currents. However, someone discovered that when a person sings in this space the Luminosa almost perfectly personify the melody of the music; pulsing different colors as the vibrations from the singer’s breath hits them.” He paused, and I finally dragged my eyes away from the sparkling cavern to look up at him. He frowned upon catching sight of me, reaching down to cup the side of my face in one hand. “You’re crying, Rose!” He sounded horrified.

            I sniffed, laughing shakily, and gave him a watery smile. “Y-yeah.”

            The Doctor’s eyebrows drew together. “I’m sorry, I—I thought you’d like it…”

He trailed off and I reached up to cover the back of his hand where it rested over my cheek with my own. “I love it, Doctor. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen…”

The lights of the Luminosa reflected in the Doctor’s eyes as he stared down at me and I blinked hard to clear the tears from my vision. “I’m glad,” the Doctor said softly, and something in his voice had changed. After another moment, however, he dropped his hand from my face and stepped back.

I tightened my grip on his other hand stubbornly, refusing to let him leave me entirely, and turned back to gaze out at the cave once more. My heart was beating faster now; there was something about standing here in the near darkness, surrounded by the tiny glowing creatures everywhere, which filled the air with an almost tangible sense of emotion. I could feel it pressing down on me like an almost physical touch.

I don’t know how long we stood there taking it all in, maybe hours, maybe minutes, but I barely noticed. Even if the trip to this cave was nothing more than an exciting natural phenomenon to the Doctor, it was the most romantic thing anyone—especially him—had ever done for me. I leaned in, resting my head against his arm and sighed softly. The regular world may have been in complete chaos, but for now…we had this moment of peace.

Eventually the Doctor shifted beside me, and his small movement pulled me out of my reverie. “Ahem…” He cleared his throat a little roughly, tugging his hand gently from mine so that he could lift his fingers to needlessly straighten his suit. “We should probably get back to the TARDIS. Stuff to do. Lots of things to—er— _thing_.” He turned quickly and nearly smacked into the TARDIS’ front doors. “Oh! There she is!” he blustered, shoving a hand through his hair and taking a quick step backwards causing him to nearly trip over me, standing halfway turned around, staring at him. At the touch of my hand the Doctor jerked back. “Oh! Blimey, Rose Tyler, you gave me a turn! Come on then, off to the TARDIS with you.” He made shooing motions at me while I blinked at him. “Enough glowy creatures for now! Move it along, Rose Tyler, we’ve got stuff to, uh—”

“To stuff?” I put in with a raised eyebrow, watching the Doctor push open the doors.

“Exactly right, Rose. Now come on, enough dilly-dallying for today.”

He strode into the ship and I stared after him for a long moment, wondering if he’d gone mad. Well, mad _der_. The Doctor’s abrupt switch in attitude had thrown me a little, but tried to put it from my mind as I turned back to the glowing cave, trying to take the whole scene in so that I’d never forget it, not one teeny detail. Finally, with a small sigh, I turned and followed the Doctor back into the TARDIS.

**~OOO~**

Inside the ship I found the Doctor standing at the base of the ramp looking a little lost. I stepped up behind him and placed a hand on his arm. He jumped a little, and then turned to face me. I smiled at him, wide and genuine. “Thank-you Doctor, it was beautiful.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, looking a little embarrassed. “No trouble, Rose Tyler. Just a little something different; more entertaining than ‘Find which ventilation shaft the Doctor has gotten himself stuck in this time’, right?” He grinned, but I could see he still felt uncomfortable. For my part, I was still floating on the sea of emotion that had seemed to seep out from the Cave walls, making me feel light and full of a myriad of complicated feelings.

“No one’s ever done something like that for me before, Doctor. It was amazing.” I took a small step forward—I was very close to him now, only inches away really—and lifted my eyes to his. He was watching me closely, eyes suddenly careful.

I could feel the rapid thrumming in my chest, which had started when he’d looked at me with such intensity in the cave, trip into staccato beats. He’d felt something when we’d looked at each other just then, I _knew_ he had, and then he’d run from it, making up some excuse, just like he always did.

I stepped a little closer and pressed my hands against his chest, searching his eyes. His face was stoic as ever, his hands still in the pockets of his pinstriped trousers, but I thought I could feel his breathing pick up just a little under my touch. I searched his face, looking for something, anything, to indicate that he was reacting at all the same way to my presence that I was to his….but he only continued to gaze calmly down at me, face blank, blinking his wide brown eyes as he waited patiently for me to back down. Like I always did.

            But something about today felt different. The way he’d looked at me in the darkness and said “I’m glad.” He’d started to do something just then, but pulled back, stopped himself. We were always doing that, the Doctor and me, dancing about feelings as if they were the giant pink elephant in the middle of the TARDIS. He hid behind his jokes and rambling stories about the universe, I swallowed back my fanciful human ideals, and together we still managed to live a respectably fun life together. But I didn’t want to play that game anymore. I wanted to lay all my cards on the table. And this morning I wasn’t going to back down.

Taking a deep breath to calm my sudden nerves, I leaned forward and stretched up on my tiptoes, raising my face to his, and locking my eyes on the Doctor’s. He had to see that I was serious, that this wasn’t just some passing human fancy. Slowly I reached up and placed a hand on his cheek, brushing my fingers across his face with the barest of caresses. My fingertips grazed over a faint tracery of stubble—the Doctor had apparently been neglecting the razor recently—and then slid over the bottom of his left sideburn. It was strange, really, how he touched me like this all the time, yet seemed to have no clue what doing so did to me. Well if his reaction to my touch just now was anything to go by, he had some idea _now_.

The Doctor’s eyes widened as he finally seemed to realize what was going on.  His lips parted and he started to pull back, but I was faster. I dropped my hand from his cheek and reached up to grab him by both lapels. I yanked his body downward, pushing up on my toes and surprising him enough with my boldness that by the time he caught his balance—I was already kissing him.

My kiss only lasted a few seconds, because that was how long it took me to realize he _wasn’t_ kissing me back. As that realization settled in I felt a wave of humiliation crash over me. Face burning, I slowly lowered myself back to my feet and released the Doctor’s jacket. He remained frozen in what I could only assume was absolute shock, his head bent down toward me and his brown eyes very wide. He looked like a waxwork from Madame Tussauds and if I hadn’t been in the middle of a psychotic break just then, I might have laughed.

I took a step backward, feeling dizzy from my pounding heart. _What_ had I just done?!

Another step backwards and the Doctor’s brain seemed to restart. He tilted his head to the side and pursed his lips, giving me a quizzical look.

“Rose Tyler, did you just kiss me?” he asked, sounding as if he was beyond baffled as to how he’d gotten himself into this situation.

Oh god. Oh bugger. Oh stupid, stupid, _stupid!_ I felt like my face was on fire with mortification. I ducked my head, pulling an old trick out of the hat and hiding behind my long hair so that I didn’t have to look him in the eye. “Um, yes?”

“Why would you do something like that?”

The question hit me like a physical blow, wringing a startled gasp from me as I staggered backward, lurching away from the Doctor and nearly backing into the wall. I should have said something flippant just then, played it cool, teased him…pretended that I’d just been lost in the moment and was fooling around…any number of things that he was so good at pulling off, but I couldn’t bring myself to fake it this time. In the end it took me several long seconds to compose myself enough to choke out, “Don’t you know?”

I felt my heart squeeze at having to voice the question. He was still giving me that perplexed look, as if I were a particularly complex problem that he was as yet unable to solve. I lifted my eyes to his then, and stared him down.

“Come on, Doctor,” I whispered, forcing the words out as I felt my throat constrict. I didn’t dare speak any louder or I knew the tremor in my voice would give me away. “Do you really not know? It’s been two years; is it really so unexpected?”

His eyes cleared at that statement, and his brow smoothed as something clicked in that mad head of his. For an abnormally clever person he really was abysmally stupid in some respects.

“Oh,” he said slowly, blinking at me. Then, “Oooh!” as his eyes widened and he took a hasty step away from where I stood against the wall. He was looking at me now as if I were slightly dangerous. “I see.”

I advanced on him, determined not to let him brush me off. “Do you really see?” I demanded, matching his retreat until he backed into the railing of the ramp. I reached for him again but he caught my wrists before my hands could land. The expression on his face stopped me cold.

 “Rose,” he began, and he was looking at me with such pity that I was suddenly unable to bear looking him in the eye. Oh god, he felt sorry for me! For the stupid little human girl who’d gone and fallen for the utterly ridiculous, flighty, charismatic, wonderful alien man whose name I didn’t even know. I ducked my head and tried to tug my arms free, but he held fast, refusing to let me run from him. “You’re right,” he said slowly, and I stopped struggling to listen, heart hammering in my chest. “I suppose it’s not so very unexpected.”

His voice was quiet and his grip gentle, but the Doctor’s words hurt all the more for his kindness.

“But you must see why it won’t work; why it _can’t_ work,” the Doctor continued, a deep sadness in his voice. I was only inches from him; I could practically feel the rise and fall of his chest as he spoke, but I might as well have been miles away.

“We can make it work,” I whispered, trying to hide the desperation in my voice as I fought not to cry. “You asked me once how long I was going to stay with you. ‘Forever.’ I said, and you smiled at me, Doctor. The way you looked at me that day…The way you touch me sometimes…do you even realize—” I cut myself off, switching tack. “What’s a girl supposed to think when you ask me something like that? Why—?” My voice broke on that final word and the Doctor took the opportunity to cut in.

“You know why, Rose,” he said softly, and I felt a slight pressure on my wrists as he leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss to my forehead before releasing me.

And just like that the perfect moment we’d shared only minutes earlier was destroyed. He was probably counting the reasons he regretted taking me to the cave, wishing he’d decided on some nice, safe, bloodthirsty alien tribe bent on our destruction. No way to get mixed signals when you’re running for your life.

I remained rooted in place at the base of the ramp, head still ducked low, hands now clutched to my chest, and heard him step away from me, moving up the ramp toward the console. _The Cave of Living Song_ hadn’t been a romantic gesture; of course it hadn’t! It was just a bunch of glowing alien larva to him. And I was just another girl to him. One companion was the same as another in his eyes; interchangeable, just another notch in his belt.

And then I realized the truth of my own memory with a sudden, jarring, clarity. He’d smiled. When I’d announced I’d stay with him forever, he’d just smiled at me. Yes, he’d taken my hand, but what was so different about that? _Indulgent_ was the word that sprang to mind. Just as I’d thought about the Doctor messing about with the TARDIS, he was indulging my petty human desires. He’d lived nearly 1000 years to my twenty, and he’d likely go on to live a 1000 more long after my death. Of course he wouldn’t want to tether himself to a silly human girl whose lifespan was over in the blink of an eye compared to his.

I felt a tear slide down my cheek and lifted a hand to brush it away, realizing that my fingers were trembling. No, my whole body was shaking. I was still curled in on myself, curtain of long blonde hair shielding my face from him, but suddenly I was seized with the urge to run. I had to get out of that room. I just knew what the look on his face would be if I was to meet his gaze, and I didn’t think I could stand it if I had to see it again. And it was that thought alone that spurred me into action. I started walking, slowly at first, then faster, until I was almost past the console. I heard him start to turn, maybe even open his mouth to say something to me, and I bolted through the exit and down the hallway, leaving the console room as far behind me as I could.

**~OOO~**

I ran for a long time, feeling my cheeks wet with tears that could no longer be held back. Stupid, stupid, idiot Rose! I chastised myself. Of course the Doctor doesn’t think of you that way. He cares about you, protects you, but that’s only because you’re a companion, just another person to pass the time with and show off too. The Doctor doesn’t have time for silly human attachments or notions like ‘romance’, and god forbid someone tries to get him to talk about his feelings!

I had fought so hard to be allowed to remain on board the TARDIS and now I wanted nothing more than to curl up in my room in my flat back in modern-day London and have a huge pity party for myself. Except that I knew I couldn’t leave, because the Doctor couldn’t be alone right now, not when he’d like as not go charging into trouble without a second thought.

I slowed down as the hallway I’d been racing down opened out into a large, glass-walled structure, full of humid air and crammed everywhere with plants of varying size, color and texture. I halted, staring around the giant conservatory. After a moment I shook my head, laughing incredulously as I stared around the cavernous space. Why should it surprise me that the TARDIS had a conservatory? It had a giant library and a pool, why not this too?

I only recognized a handful of the plants, many were strange shades of colors that I had no human name for, and more than one had snaking, tentacle-like vines that crept along the floor and over the walls with a disturbing vitality. There was a winding flagstone pathway which led off into the forest of trees and flowers, and a stone bench off to one side of the doorway, and it was there that I finally allowed myself to sit and drop my head into my hands.

My elbows dug into my knees and my fingers into my scalp, but I didn’t lift my face from my hands for a long time. I had to think through the consequences of what I’d just done.

Point one: I’d just kissed the Doctor. Really, truly snogged him, and he had looked completely stunned.

Point two: I’d done it before; though Cassandra had been controlling my body that time so it didn’t really count. Also, the Doctor, despite not knowing that it had been Cassandra when I’d snogged him the first time, had still looked utterly gob-smacked at my kiss.

Point three: The Doctor knew what that kiss meant for me and didn’t reciprocate my feelings. In fact, he had made it perfectly clear how very much a relationship with him would not ever happen. Ever. Which shouldn’t have crushed me as much as it did, because really, he wasn’t human—much as he tried to act like it—he was Gallifreyan, and must not realize just how much our emotions rule us. Just look at the way Lady Pompadour had mooned over him all those years.

Point four: After what I’d said to him just now, I knew he wouldn’t touch me again. Not in any way that he might think I could misunderstand. He _would_ let me stay with him though, that much I was sure of; even knowing that it was breaking my heart, because he’d sworn he’d never force me out. Even if he wouldn’t allow himself to care for me that way, he needed me here, just as much as I needed him.

I’d just come to this conclusion when I became aware of something cool and slightly slimy wrapping around my throat. I jerked in surprise, realizing that while I’d been feeling sorry for myself one of the living blue vines had snuck up on me and curled itself around my neck. My hands flew up, trying to pry the clammy thing away from my skin, and I started at the sickening feeling of a steady pulse coming from inside the plant like a heartbeat. At my touch the vine tightened, cinching closer about my throat and causing me to choke.

My whole body went into survival mode, fingers digging into the squirming, pulsing flesh of the vine and tugging at it, trying to alleviate the pressure on my airway, legs kicking wildly. Black spots began to dance in front of my vision and I knew there was only one thing I could do now…useless as it would probably be…

Sucking in my remaining air, I blew it out in a strangled scream that shattered off the glass walls of the conservatory in a shower of fractured sound.

And then everything went black.

**~OOO~**

I came to on the ground. It took me a long moment to process the fact that I was no longer on the stone bench being strangled by an alien plant which had something against humanity, or possibly me in particular—or maybe it just hated the color purple, my foggy mind suggested, still hazy and incoherent—and instead flat on my back on the flagstone pathway.

It took me another moment to grasp that my head had been pillowed by a lumpy ball of fabric which I realized was the Doctor’s suit jacket. As to him, the Doctor sat on the stone bench, surrounded by various blue bits of a rather hacked apart plant. When he saw that I was awake he straightened, coming over to me.

“Doctor?” I croaked, my throat feeling raw. I sat up slowly, fingers trailing lightly over my bruised neck.

“Are you alright, Rose?” he asked anxiously, eyes flitting back and forth between me and the remains of the vine.

“My throat hurts and I sound like a chain-smoker.” I wheezed out. He caught me eyeing the scattered chunks of slimy blue plant flesh.

“Don’t worry, it’s dead now,” the Doctor assured me, reaching down to help me to my feet and then dropping his hands as soon as he seemed certain I wouldn’t fall over. I handed him back his jacket and he draped it over one arm.

“What did you do to it?” I asked, finding that speaking in a whisper eased the soreness on my vocal cords. “Hack it apart with a chainsaw?”

“Certainly not!” the Doctor scoffed, sounding offended at such a primitive notion. “The Sonic is perfectly capable of handling a Venusian Creeper.”

“Is that what that was? It tried to kill me, Doctor!” I croaked, sounding like an enraged frog. I poked hard at his chest with my finger, forcing him to back up several paces. “What do you have something so dangerous aboard the TARDIS for?”

The Doctor had the grace to look embarrassed. “Curiosity, mostly. All the plants in this room have either been gifted or gathered during my travels, Rose. Some provide medicine, some food.”

“And some remove the need for a guard dog.” I put in, still massaging my throat. “Because who wants to pay for kibbles ‘n’ bits when you can just sick the shrubbery on any unwelcome guests.”

The Doctor almost smiled at that remark, snark was, after all, his second language—or third, or forty-fifth—but quickly swallowed it back.

“Er…yes. Many of these plants are dangerous, which is why I haven’t shown you this room in the TARDIS before now. In fact,” and he paused to scowl at the ceiling of the room, squinting a little in the sunlight (which I knew must be real in some form and the presence of which I knew better than to question), “This room _should_ have been blocked off.”

I felt a hum from the TARDIS in response, and if I’d had to put words to it I’d have said the TARDIS was rolling her eyes at the Doctor. Almost as if the ship thought he was over-reacting. Which, in most cases, I’d have agreed with…up until the TARDIS garden went all Harry Potter on me and tried to smoother me for sitting on a bench.

The Doctor returned his gaze to me, in lecture mode now. “The Venusian Creeper that attacked you is known for strangling its victims and then absorbing their life force as they die. Nasty biddies; great for getting rid of stubborn weeds, or unwanted company, as you so brilliantly pointed out earlier. They’re often planted around strongholds: fortresses, castles and the like, as an extra measure of protection against enemies.”

He was avoiding looking directly at me, I noticed, though I found myself doing the same. I fluttered my hands at my hoodie, tugging at the sleeves til they covered my hands. An anxious habit.

“If you weren’t expecting me to be here, how did you know I was in trouble?” I asked hoarsely, though less so than before; my voice was slowly coming back to itself. The Doctor rubbed at the back of his head, looking uncomfortable and determined at the same time.

“I…er…followed you after you left the console room,” he admitted, and I felt my face flush all over again as the memory of that disaster washed over me once more. “I wanted to…to explain…I don’t know…” He scratched at the back of his head with both hands this time, standing his hair on end. “I wanted to apologize for how I handled what…er…happened.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes and I stared at him.

“And the TARIDS led you here?” I asked.

“Not straight away…I think she’s a little…er…displeased with me at the moment.” He looked both peevish and contrite over that admission and I felt a tiny nudge in the back of my mind, the feeling of “solidarity” in the TARDIS’ hum. The Doctor went on. “I was only a turn or two away when I heard you scream. The TARDIS finally opened up the way for me then, and I ran in and found you wrapped in vines and unconscious.” He glared at me suddenly, and I blinked, a little thrown by his sudden change of attitude. “What’s rule one, Rose Tyler?” he demanded without prelude.

I blinked at him. “What?”

“Rule one!” the Doctor pressed, turning his scowl on _me_ now. He didn’t wait for me to reply. “Don’t wonder off!”

“That’s off-ship, Doctor!” I protested, forgetting for the moment that I had been recently humiliated and also nearly-killed. “The TARDIS is supposed to be safe!”

“She is safe!” the Doctor insisted. “When you follow the rules!”

“Don’t treat me like a child!” I snapped back, abruptly furious. “You’re the one keeping carnivorous vegetation in the back room. I—”

“You _what_?” he growled, a dare in those words. His fingers were clenched tightly around the suit jacket in his hands.

“I…” I began again, and then swallowed back my retort. I wasn’t angry with him for his rules. They were simple. They were meant to prevent situations just like this one. No, I was upset over something completely different. And so was he. He had been worried that I’d been hurt, also, apparently, over offending me in his reaction earlier. I was falling back on fighting because it was so much easier to shout at the Doctor than to think about how poorly I’d read the signs of his intent toward me. “…I…I’m sorry.” I finished lamely.

The words slipped out before I realized I was saying them, and I watched as their affect hit the Doctor. His anger faded and his snapping brown eyes lightened. “You’re what?” he asked, looking a bit thrown.

I swallowed back a “You heard me!” comment, which I would have tossed out if it had been Mickey or mum asking me that, but the Doctor looked honestly surprised.

“I’m sorry.” I repeated, taking a steadying breath and squaring my shoulders. “You’re right. Also, thank-you.”

“Thank-you?” the Doctor parroted, still sounding confused about the turn our argument had taken. “You know, Rose Tyler, you’re losing this argument spectacularly.”

Half a smile tugged at my lips. “I know, Doctor.” His mouth quirked upwards hesitantly, as if he were still uncertain that our fight was over. “I have to let you win some of the time, you know, much as it’ll only inflate your already dangerous ego. And yes, thank-you. For saving my life. Again.”

“Let me win?” the Doctor protested, looking stung.

I smiled for real then. The fact that the Doctor’s mad head had skated right over my gratefulness for my nth rescue, bypassed the drama of the disastrous kiss, and latched on to the ‘let you win’ comment, showed how easily he could lose his focus. I could do this, I decided: banter with the Doctor, get into scrapes and out of them again, and still want to do it all over the next day. The Doctor didn’t have the same feelings for me that I did for him, fine. I would deal with that and lock mine away. We’d still be the Doctor and Rose, travelling through the stars, just as we’d always done.

“Come on, Doctor,” I said, nudging him playfully with my elbow as he continued to gape at me with wide-eyed incredulity, muttering “Let me? _Let me_?!” in a tone of disgust under his breath. “Let’s go get lunch and I’ll also let you fascinate me with a description of all the creepy plants you’ve got squirreled away on the TARDIS.”

I guided the pouting Doctor out of the conservatory, feeling grateful that I could fall back on old habits. The Doctor seemed to have completely forgotten about everything that had happened in the console room, despite having followed me out here with the intension of discussing it further, but I was willing to let it lie. I knew all he’d have wanted to tell me was a list of reasons why he—to borrow from my primary school vocabulary—“liked me, but not _like_ -liked me”, due to the whole human/Time Lord thing, and I didn’t want to hear it. So I followed the already chattering Doctor down the hall to toward the kitchen, trying to ignore the painful little thump that my protesting heart made in my chest as we walked.

**~OOO~**

**And that’s all she wrote, folks! ;) Sooo….who wants to smack me for this chapter? Or perhaps more aptly, smack the Doctor? Don’t hate on him too much….we still have many more chapters to go, dear readers. Also, here’s a link to the image that inspired the Cave of Living Song, in case anyone wanted a visual:**

<http://www.seeknewtravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/SpellboundGlowwormsCave.jpg>


	5. Chapter 5

                 **Welcome to chapter Five! It’s good to see you all again. Old faces and new ones, I love you all! Though, perhaps after the last chapter you don’t love me so much? ;) Ah well, such is an author’s life.  Let’s get to it, shall we? :)**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 5 -

It was hard to keep my promise to myself over the next week. Having decided in my heart about my feelings toward the Doctor and then acted on them, despite said actions’ disastrous results, meant that trying to pretend everything was normal aboard the TARDIS was next to impossible. I could tell that the Doctor was having a difficult time of it as well. He’d done everything possible to make the TARDIS invulnerable to attack, including, so he said, being pulled out of the Time Vortex again. Supposing his theory about the Acumen having a Time Lord prisoner was correct, the Doctor would be able to take counter-measures against all possibly stolen knowledge regarding the way the TARDIS worked.

            So the TARDIS was now apparently a fortress that bounced around the cosmos looking like a battered blue police box, and the Doctor was on tenterhooks and trying not to show it. The Doctor hated to be bored, to not be “doing”, and I could tell that not having anything to “fix” on his ship, in combination with his avoidance-but-trying-not-to-look-like-it of me, had him pinging him off the walls like a pinball. I came into the console room one afternoon and found him arguing with his ship.

            The Doctor stood in front of the console glaring so hard I thought laser beams might suddenly flash out of his eyes. His face was faintly red and his blue suit was in slight disarray, as if he’d been wrestling with something. As I drew closer, I discovered a half-opened grating that appeared to have been pried from the wall with sheer force—in fact, it was bent on one end, as if the Doctor had yanked on it with his bare hands.

            “Stop hiding!” the Doctor thundered, and I jumped from my place opposite him where I _was_ currently hidden—though not on purpose—behind the Central Beacon. However, when he continued his rant without spinning toward me I realized that he hadn’t, in fact, been calling me out, and I relaxed slightly. “You’re doing this on purpose,” the Doctor growled looking extremely put-out as he yanked on the grating for what I assumed to be more than the first time in recent minutes.  “I know— _grunt_ —that I’ve been— _huff_ —doing a lot of work on you recently—” He paused to catch his breath for a moment before resuming his attack on the grating. “—but you don’t have to be so _stubborn_ about it—ARGH!”

            There was a sudden and horrible metallic screeching sound as the grating finally lost its battle against the Doctor’s tugging fingers, followed by a loud yell and a painful sounding thud as both Doctor and grating crashed to the floor in a heap. From beneath the grating the Doctor was muttering what sounded like curses under his breath. I stepped out from behind the Beacon then and crossed my arms over my chest, surveying the sight before me.

            “Good show, Doctor,” I observed, a smirk on my lips. “Is insulting her the pivotal step in your master plan for getting the TARDIS to listen to you?”

            The Doctor shoved the heavy grating off his chest and it landed beside him with an echoing clang. He stared blackly up at me. “She’s being _difficult_ ,” he muttered darkly, glaring at the now gaping expanse of the wall. “She’s locked me out of the system I was trying to upgrade!”

            In the back of my mind the TARDIS hummed, and I could feel her smugness at the Doctor’s annoyance. “Oh she has, has she?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him as he got to his feet and dusted himself off. “And who’s poking around in her most intimate places, Doctor? No means no, you know?”

            I didn’t think he even heard me, let alone understood the connotation of my statement as he stepped toward the open shaft in the wall and lifted the Sonic to light the space inside.

“If she would just stop fighting me…” he grunted, moving back and forth in front of the opening and peering further into the darkness, “She’d realize that I know what’s best for her and stop acting… like an over-emotional…female—”

At those words I leaped forward to smack his shoulder, a reflex action when the Doctor waxed on about ‘female difficulties’.

            “Oi! Watch it…” I said warningly, and thwacked his arm playfully. He turned a sheepish look on me.

            “Sorry, Rose Tyler, no offence meant. Only I just need to do a little work here and it would be supremely helpful if you could convince the TARDIS to cooperate.”

            “Um, Me?” I gave him a skeptical look. “Doctor, I don’t exactly speak Time Ship, unlike some aliens who shall remain nameless…” _In more ways than one_ , I added privately.

            “Yes, yes,” he said, “but being as the pair of you have been so cozy as of late, I thought perhaps you could use some of your feminine bonding and get her to _be reasonable_?” He muttered the last few words with a trace of annoyance, no longer looking at me, eyes firmly on the open shaft as he apparently considered how best to get inside it. It wasn’t overly large and so he had to contort his body rather awkwardly in order to get the Sonic far enough in to make whatever system adjustments he currently deemed necessary.

            “I’m stayin’ out of this fight, Doctor. My feminine wiles have informed me that you’re only askin’ for trouble.”

            “HA!” The word echoed from inside the chute where the Doctor had wedged himself. “I don’t ask for trouble, Rose Tyler, I frolic in it! And if there’s one thing I know,” he paused to push up on his toes and reach deeper into the darkness, “it’s that trouble is more afraid of me than _I_ am of _it_ —!”

A moment later there was a sizzling ZAAAP from inside the shaft where the Doctor’s head and one long arm were stuffed, followed by a muffled shout. The Doctor withdrew his body from the wall with such force that it was almost as if the TARDIS had ejected him. His hair stood up as if he’d been running his hands through it with vicious abandon and his face was covered in what looked suspiciously like “soot”.

            “Er…right, I’ll just come back to that at a later time then…” he muttered, wobbling away from the wall in a drunken line. I wanted to laugh at his predicament, God knows that my lips were trembling with suppressed mirth, but I fought it back out of respect to his dignity, such as he had any left. I watched as the Doctor tottered up to the console to nurse his injured pride, avoiding my eyes as he poked and prodded at various buttons while the TARDIS hummed a “You asked for it!” vibe in my mind.

            I cleared my through, pressing a fist to my lips as I fought back laughter. “Ahem…too much frolicking, Doctor?” I asked innocently, eyes dancing, and he leveled a black look at me. I smirked. “I tried to warn you….” I sang, strolling up the ramp to join him. My amusement was real and I reveled in the relief of it. It had been days since we’d had such a free exchange of words.

Ever since I’d kissed him, the Doctor had barely been able to hold my gaze. We’d been to four different planets and gone back in time to watch the assassination of Caesar in as many days. I could see a plan of distraction when I was running all over the galaxy in the middle of one, and I was exhausted. When we were ‘home’ in the TARDIS the Doctor had been extremely formal. Oh he was perfectly polite, of course, but none of our usually camaraderie was present. I felt a lot like I had in the beginning of our adventures together, except without the breathless anticipation. In short, the atmosphere inside the ship was bordering on stifling. Today marked the first real foray into normalcy that we’d had in nearly a week, and I was fairly certain my next words would crush it into oblivion.

“Doctor,” I asked carefully, waiting for him to turn toward me. He was busy at the moment rubbing his face furiously with a towel procured from who-knows-where and ruffling up his hair until the dust and debris from the shaft had dislodged themselves. He reminded me of a puppy emerging from a lake and trying to shake all the water free from its fur. I could tell that he heard the change in my tone of voice from the way he stiffened slightly, pausing in his scrub-up at the sound of his name.

“Yes, Rose?” he asked cautiously, dropping the no-longer-white towel onto the console.

“I’ve been thinking lately,” I said slowly, “about the…” I paused for a moment, unsure of how to proceed considering his last reaction to this subject, despite his recent precautions to the TARDIS. “…about the Acumen.” I finished, flashing my eyes to his to gage his reaction. He only looked tired this time.

“I’ve never stopped,” he replied, truly meeting my eyes for the first time in days. He leaned back against the console, gripping the bottom of the desktop with his hands. “Rose, I know what I said before, but I think maybe—”

“Don’t start, Doctor,” I cut him off before he could launch into an undoubtedly well thought out and brilliantly reasoned explanation as to why I shouldn’t be on the TARDIS—again—and watched his face tighten infinitesimally, though he held his tongue. “As I was sayin’, Doctor,” I continued as calmly I could, trying to explain my plan rationally. “I was thinking about the Acumen, and their prisoner. We have to go back and look for him. I know you’ve been worried about the potential hostage situation,” I hurried on, watching his lips thin as I headed him off at the pass. “I’ve…” I hesitated a little then finished my sentence as gently as I could. “I’ve heard you talking in your sleep. You…you were…”

But I couldn’t say the rest out loud. He hadn’t been _talking_ so much as crying out. I’d caught him passed out from exhaustion just last night, sprawled over a long couch in the library, surrounded by books in varying languages that I couldn’t read, and he’d been moaning in his sleep, sounding desperate and afraid. Sometimes the words he’d mumbled had been in English and sometimes what I assumed to be Gallifreyan, but the entire time my heart had clenched over the pain in his voice and etched across his features. He’d said my name too, just once, just “Not Rose…not her…” and then gone back to thrashing in his sleep.

The Doctor was watching me with a veiled expression, but I could tell that he was thrown by the realization that I’d caught him in such a moment of vulnerability, and my heart went out to him. He always tried to be so strong, so selfless and valiant and noble…always pushing forward, even when he had no plan, barely a chance of success…that having him know that I knew he wasn’t an unstoppable force seemed to hurt him all the more.

“It’s too dangerous,” he said at once, slanting his eyes away from me and hurrying on as if he could erase the subject of his nightmares if he didn’t allow me to continue to discuss them. “Even if I thought I could get in and out without being caught, there’s no guarantee I’d be able to find him and extricate him safely to the TARDIS—that is expecting that he is, in fact, a prisoner and not working with the Acuites for some untoward purpose.”

“But isn’t there some way of knowing that without contacting him physically? Have you even tried the psychic paper?” I asked, and watched as the Doctor’s hand flew to his chest, pressing against the hidden inner pocket I knew held the little black flip-book containing his psychic paper. “You could at least try to send him a message, Doctor. Maybe in code or something, in case he is being held against his will?”

The Doctor seemed to consider the potential of this idea for a while. Finally he pulled the little book out of his jacket and held it in his hands for a long moment, thinking hard.

“Despite the fact that even if he does respond, we’ll have no way of knowing if the reply is legitimate or not,” he said at last, “I’ll try. For you, Rose Tyler, who would never forgive me if I refused, I’ll try.”

It wasn’t really about me though, I knew that. It was _he_ who would never be able to forgive _himself_ if there really was a final member of his race trapped on that godforsaken rock in the Beta 5 Nebula, and he had been too selfishly concerned with his own safely—to say nothing of mine—that he hadn’t at least attempted a rescue.

I watched as he paced about the console platform, muttering to himself and scribbling characters onto the paper. He was so intent on his work that he didn’t notice me sidle up next to him to watch him write. I couldn’t read the note of course, he’d written it in Circular Gallifreyan, but I loved to look at the series of swirls and lines that made up the language of the Doctor’s home.

“It’s really beautiful, you know…” I couldn’t help saying, my voice reverent. I kept my eyes on the little book as I spoke but I could feel the Doctor shift beside me and knew he was watching me. I raised my hand to trace a finger delicately over the circular script. “I wish I could read it.”

The Doctor made a flourish on the psychic paper then, and the whole message disappeared. I yanked my hand back, startled. “Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”

            “You didn’t do anything, Rose,” he assured me. “I just sent the message. If there is a Time Lord in the Beta 5 Nebula and they are in possession of psychic paper, then they’ll already have this message.”

            “Like sending a text?” I clarified, flicking my eyes up at him. He grimaced a little.

            “Only in the basest sense,” the Doctor allowed. “Human technology is nothing like psychic paper,” he continued, a hint of arrogance lacing his voice, and I suppressed a snort. “Our way is much more precise, and without the hassles of service towers and roaming charges.”

            He lifted the stylus he’d been using to scrawl out the message to the unknown Time Lord and returned it to the paper. He then spent the next minute carefully tracing a delicate pattern of lines and circles until the paper held what appeared to be a single circular symbol, various characters overlapping to form a single word.

            “What’s it say?” I whispered, realizing I’d been holding my breath the entire time he’d been writing.

The Doctor turned toward me, and said in a voice that I might almost have said sounded fond, despite the fact that he still wouldn’t quite look at me: “Rose.”

I felt my heart start to speed up and tamped it back down. This wasn’t a romantic gesture, I reminded myself. It was just the Doctor doing something nice for me. I watched as he pointed to certain parts of the image and translated them for me.

“This character is roughly equivalent to the Roman letter ‘R’,” he started, pointing to an approximation of a points-down crescent moon with three small dots in the carved out section of the circle. “This is ‘O’,” And this time the character was a circle with a small black dot near the interior base. “’S’…” The upside down crescent moon again, this time with three vertical lines intersecting it in the middle, “and ‘E’.” he finished up, pointing to the last character: a bigger circle with a tiny ring bisecting the lower half, like a planet in orbit.

I couldn’t speak for a long time. I just stared at the paper, tracing my fingertips over the word, over my name, written in a dying language by the only man alive who still knew how to share it. I was beyond touched at his gesture.

“Rose?”

The voice was hesitant in my ear and it took me a moment to pull myself away from the psychic paper and glace briefly up at him. “Mmmm?”

He was watching me closely. “I’m sorry.”

I knew then that this had been his gift to me. Maybe he couldn’t return my feelings, but he could share this one thing, this precious, sacred even, art with me. My name had been his apology and his penance in one.

“I feel like all I’m doing lately is apologizing to you,” he continued, shoving a hand through his hair, an unconscious habit that manifested when he was agitated. He straightened up, standing in front of me rigid as a solider, hands fisted at his sides. His eyebrows drew together as he pinned me with intense brown eyes. “I want—no, I _need_ you to know that I don’t want to hurt you. All I want to do is protect you, Rose Tyler, shop girl from London, who doesn’t need protecting from anyone.”

I could hear the tenderness in his voice, imagine the soft smile on his lips as he said these words, but I kept my eyes down, trying to memorize the pattern of my name as it had been written by his hand.

“I—I care about you a great deal,” he said, and it sounded like the words caught in his throat. I wasn’t sure if they were hard to get out because he didn’t mean them—or at least didn’t mean them in the way I wished he did—or he did mean them, and was struggling to make himself understood in a way that wouldn’t be misinterpreted by the emotionally-charged human girl across from him. He went on, voice very serious. “I also need you to know that I am beyond honored that you care about me in return.”

I was relieved that he hadn’t used the word ‘flattered’, something about that word just seemed so shallow and fake. ‘Honored’ struck me as meaningful, if poignant.

“I like having you here, running through the stars, getting into trouble—”

“Keeping you _out_ of trouble, more like.” I interjected, glancing up at him through my lashes in time to see a boyish grin stretch across his face, lighting it like sunbeams breaking through clouds after a storm.

“Too right, Rose Tyler,” he readily admitted, shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels again. “You keep me anchored.”

“Look, you don’t have to do this, Doctor,” I said as steadily as I could, cutting him off just as he’d opened his mouth to continue. His grin faltered a little at my rude interruption. I flipped the little black book closed, hiding my name, and fiddled with it so I didn’t have to look at him. “I get it. I really do. Companion only.”

“Rose, that’s not all you—”

 “Thanks for showing me my name. I’ve always been curious how it would look in the language of your people.” I added, looking somewhere around his navel as I tried to regain my composure. All the carefreeness that I’d felt during our earlier banter about the TARDIS had fled the room.

“Rose…” he started again, but I broke in.

“Really, it was pretty,” I said hastily, pressing the small book back into his hands and taking a step away from where he stood. “I’d like to see more but I…I need to…to…get a book.”

The Doctor blinked down at me. “Get…a book?”

“Yes. A book.” I said defensively, knowing even as I continued speaking how much of a four year old I sounded like. “An important book. With words. And pictures. And text I can read.” I was backing away from him now, making for the hall that I knew would eventually lead me to the TARDIS library. I took two more steps backward before turning and striding quickly from the room.

As soon as I gained the emptiness of the hallway I covered my face with my hands. “A book with words, Rose?” I muttered rhetorically to myself. “Clever girl…he won’t realize you found that whole encounter awkward as hell at all.”

I strode down the hallway shaking my head at my own idiocy. The Doctor had been trying to smooth things over and I’d just shunted aside his words like so much rubbish and left him standing alone in the middle of the room. And after he’d written my name for me.

I stumbled to a stop in the middle of the hallway and leaned against the wall, closing my eyes. My name. The way he’d written the characters that formed it; how he’d carefully shown me how each intersecting part connected to the image that made up the whole; the gentle way he’d expressed his feelings toward me…and the flippant way I’d brushed off his heartfelt gesture and run from the room.

“Argh!” I groaned, pressing my head against the wall and gritting my teeth in frustration. “Stupid, Rose. You don’t just sweep heartfelt gestures under the rug and expect them not to have any repercussions. You’d better hope that the Doctor’s psychic e-mail gets a reply and distracts him from your crazy human emotions or you won’t be able to stay here much longer.” I paused for a moment. “You’d also better stop with the talking to yourself in the third person before someone overhears you.” And with that I snapped my mouth shut and marched off to the library.

When I reached the echoing space I took a seat at one of the lamp-lit desks, leaning back in a hard-backed wooden chair resting on casters, and stared up at the vaulted ceiling. I didn’t need a book. I wasn’t even in the mood for reading right now, but a book was what I’d said I was off to get, and so the library was where I had to be. I wondered if the Doctor would come looking for me or if he’d be too busy reminding himself why he’d been avoiding me in the first place.

**~OOO~**

I spent the next forty-five minutes alternating between mentally berating myself for being so cold toward the Doctor and whooshing around the long aisles between the shelves and the desks on my rolling chair—a game which was not without its dangers. At my last count I’d crashed into four desks and knocked several stacks of what was probably ancient and priceless alien literature into piles of chaos across the library floor. I’d probably have had less trouble if I’d played my game with open eyes…but there was something about zooming through space blindly, with only self-induced wind hitting my closed eyes and blowing my hair back off my face that was calming to me. Eventually, however, I knew I would have to go back and face the music.

It was the TARDIS’ curious hum that first alerted me. I had a sudden sense of a dog on point zing through the back of my mind only moments before my flying chair was upset from its previously smooth course and a surprised grunt of pain cracked through the silence of the room.

My eyes flew open as I tumbled to the tiled floor, said chair dumping me out with careless abandon as it crashed down beside me. I muttered a word under my breath that would have earned me a smack from my mother and rubbed my throbbing hip.

“Apparently Earth girls are much less ladylike than I’d previously been given to understand.” A voice said behind me. I swung my head around so fast it felt like an Exorcist twist and I rubbed at the vicious crick in my neck that immediately followed. The Doctor stood in the middle of the isle, rubbing his shin where my chair had apparently just rammed him.

“And apparently Time Lords are more given to spying than I was given to understand.” I grunted back, struggling to my feet. “How long have you been there, anyway?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Only just arrived. The TARDIS was complaining that something was causing a bit of a ruckus in the library. And well I do love a good ruckus—though it has nothing on a brouhaha and pales in comparison to a good old-fashioned hullabaloo—I recalled that you had said something about getting a book.” He paused to glance around at the various piles of destruction I’d left among the shelves. “Rose Tyler, do you have something against the written word in general, or is it just that this important book with Words and Pictures was not in the Stacks and you were simply venting your displeasure?”

I blushed. “I wasn’t pitching a fit in your library, Doctor. I was—” I broke off, suddenly feeling rather childish for what I _had_ been doing in here.

He raised an eyebrow at me. “You were?”

“Um, I was rolling down the aisles in this chair because it has wheels and I’d have been kicked out of the library at home if I’d dared try it there?” I made this confession all in a rush, watching the Doctor’s face closely.

The Doctor blinked at me for a moment, looking nonplused. In fact, he was silent just long enough that I had started to feel uncomfortable when he surprised me by breaking into a wide grin.

“Brilliant!”

I stared at him. “Excuse me?”

The Doctor righted my chair and threw himself into it. “Last one to the other side of the library has to clean up your mess!”

“What? Doctor, what are you—” I turned to see him scoot my old chair around so that he was facing me from the center of the long aisle that stretched from the entrance to the distant end of the library.

“Better hurry up, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor crowed, kicking off against the tiles and thrusting his chair several feet away from me. “From this point on I’m already winning!”

I gaped at him for another long second—which he used to skid another two feet…and crash into a desk, sending a stack of precariously piled books crashing to the floor around him. This halted his progress while he leaped from his chair and frantically tried to clear a path.

“Road block!” he howled. “Oh the humanity!”

Laughing a little incredulously I finally gave in. The Doctor had sensed the awkwardness with which I’d left the console room and come to distill it—once again. I didn’t deserve his kindness but neither was I willing to throw it back in his face like I’d done an hour earlier. While the Doctor scrabbled about on the floor I grabbed the opportunity to race around the line of desks to the parallel aisle and grab another chair. I plopped onto it and shoved off, wheels creaking from disuse as I propelled myself haphazardly down the lane.

What followed was a series of starts and stops, crashes and curses, and almost more books on the floor than on the shelves, but we were both laughing hysterically by the time we reached the end of the desks.

“HA!” the Doctor shouted. “I win!” His chair had skidded into a tall bookshelf a few feet ahead of mine, at the junction of both our aisles. The central row of desks had ended and ahead of us stretched a wide, empty area that probably would have held a librarian’s station in a regular library, but as the Doctor really had no need of a librarian the space was vacant.

“You cheated!” I called back from the place where my chair had wedged a wheel between a couple of thick volumes baring titles in symbols I couldn’t read. “You had a head start!”

“No need to be a sore loser, Rose Tyler!” the Doctor called back, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms behind his head with an air of smugness. “It’s unbecoming of a lady.”

“Tie breaker.” I insisted, and the Doctor slanted his eyes at me, interest peaked.

“Terms?” he questioned from across the room.

“Last one to reach the back wall has to clean up the books and…um…” I paused, trying to think up a suitable punishment. “And carry the winner to the kitchen and cook her dinner.”

“Her?” the Doctor asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

“Yeah, ‘her’.” I smirked back at him. “’Cause I don’t intend on losing this race, Doctor. Also, just to make sure you don’t cheat this time, we’ll have the TARDIS tell us when to go.” The ship hummed with amusement in the back of my mind and I could tell by the Doctor’s expression that he felt it too. “Well, Doctor?” I couldn’t resist goading him. “Are you man enough?”

With an impish gleam in his eyes the Doctor rolled his chair up next to mine and settled into it with the air of a racecar driver revving his engine. As we waited for the TARDIS to give us the signal, he leaned across the expanse between us and whispered into my ear: “I hope you’ve been lifting weights in your spare time, Miss Tyler, I wouldn’t want you to throw out your back carrying me so far.”

I returned his look with a saucy one of my own. “I prefer to dictate my dinner menu to you; I don’t wanna end up eating some crazy alien delicacy that turns my skin blue. Again.”

Just then the TARDIS hummed and the Doctor instantly shoved off, the castors on his chair squealing like a stuck pig as he juddered across the floor, speeding wildly toward the far wall.

Not to be outdone, I lifted my legs and planted my feet against the counter of the closest desk, shoving off with all my strength. I flew across the floor like a shot, sailing past the Doctor with a cheeky wave of my hand and closing in fast on our ‘goal’. Which, of course, was when I realized that there was nothing to stop my progress except for the wall—which might have been the point…aside from the fact that a spectacular crash was going to take a little of the fun out of winning.

My shriek of victory twisted into one of slight panic as I threw my arms over my head and prepared for my painful triumph. My chair slammed into the wall with an echoing crack, flinging me forward and onto the floor with a bone-jarring jolt.

“Argh!” I yelped, tucking up into a ball as I flew toward the ground in a vertigo-inducing whirl of blonde hair and flailing limbs. I managed to catch the brunt of the fall with my shoulder this time around and rolled onto my knees. Behind me I heard the Doctor’s chair hit the wall and his feet hit the ground within seconds of each other as he pounded toward me.

“Rose!” he called, concern lacing my name.

I grabbed onto my fallen mount, using the toppled chair’s arm for leverage as I clambered to my feet, and pushed my hair out of my face. Turning, I waved one hand in the air, making a V-for-Victory sign. “WINNER and still champion….” I gasped out, grinning through the insistent throbbing of my shoulder as the Doctor skidded to a halt in front of me.

“Your game isn’t very graceful, Rose Tyler,” he informed me, looking me up and down to assess for any other damage.

“Perhaps not,” I allowed, “but you can’t deny I’ve got style!”

“I think that word must mean something different on Earth than it does on other words.” the Doctor muttered back, pulling a face at me.

I smacked his arm, realizing too late that I’d used the wrong arm to do so and wincing. Moments later my legs were knocked out from under me as the Doctor scooped me up into his arms. I let out a little cry of surprise. “Doctor!”

He grinned down at me. “I do believe my services are now required to transport you to the kitchen for a non-skin-altering dinner for two, Miss Tyler. Your menu requirements are?”

He held me firmly—much more easily than one might expect considering his slim frame, with one arm hooked under my knees and the other wrapped tightly around my back, tucking me against his chest. As soon as he’d picked me up though, I realized that this had been a very bad decision on my part. Being in the Doctor’s arms—cuddled close to him like this—it wasn’t helping with my “Companion Only” mantra. In fact, I was surprised that the Doctor had agreed to this part of our bargain, considering the amount of touching it involved.

“Rose?” the Doctor pressed, having already crossed the library in his long-legged strides. “Dinner?”

“Oh. Um…” I paused, trying to think up something suitably safe that we’d both enjoy and the Doctor could still cook without burning down the TARDIS. “I want KD!”

He frowned down at me. “Kay-Dee?” He over-pronounced the letters as if they were foreign, which I supposed they were to him. “Is that some sort of delicacy back in London?”

I giggled. “Only to college kids, Doctor.”

His brows drew together. “Is it difficult to make? You know, it would be a lot easier if you’d just let me—”

“Not a chance, Doctor!” I poked him in the chest with my non-injured arm. “No freaky foreign food tonight! And KD is short for Kraft Dinner: a delicious concoction of noodles and chemically-created cheesey goodness which will delight your senses and corrode your intestines in one go!” I grinned. “Also, it only requires you to boil water and throw everything into a pot.”

We were making our way down one of the long, windowless hallways now, and, following my supper instructions, had both grown quiet. I could hear the uneven pattern of the Doctor’s multiple heartbeats from the way my ear was pressed against his chest, and glanced up to find him looking pensive as he stared straight ahead, concentrating on locating the ever-moving kitchen. Now was the time to speak.

“Doctor?” I asked, keeping my head down as I waited for him to acknowledge me.

“Hmm?” I felt his response rumble through his chest even as he voiced it.

“I’m sorry, too.” I said quietly. I felt his even gait falter slightly and hurried on. “For misreading your understanding of our relationship, and for kissing you, and for over-reacting to your honesty every time you tried to let me down gently.”

I curled tighter into myself, hunching forward and tucking my arms into my own chest as if I could make myself small enough not to be seen.

“And I’m sorry for putting you in a position where you even had to do that in the first place. Us humans and our runaway emotions, eh? Always upsetting people—just look at the soaps on the telly…” My joke was halfhearted and fell flat in my own ears. The Doctor stopped walking.

I had no idea what sort of expression was on his face just then and couldn’t bring myself to look up and find out. Then he shifted and I had the sensation of falling, but slowly—he was lowering me gently to the ground, sliding down his body until my feet touched the floor. Then he lifted his hands to cup both sides of my face, a gesture so intimate that I almost took a step away from him.

“Doctor—?” I asked wretchedly, fighting to hold his gaze. I just wanted absolution for my mistake.

“Never be sorry for expressing your feelings, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor said earnestly, refusing to look away from me. “That’s one of the things that makes you humans so very beautiful. You’re more open, and rash, and heartbreakingly honest than any other species I’ve ever encountered. The truth of your emotions practically sings from the core of your being, demanding to be felt, to be experienced. Even if unrequited, you will declare yourself to the world, baring your souls. There is something so raw about feelings, Rose Tyler, something so very sensational and terrifying and _real_ , that it takes a great courage to make them known. And that is why you must never be sorry. Never sorry for embracing that risk. If you must, be sorry for a life not lived, a quarrel not mended, but never regret taking that chance and flinging yourself off a cliff without knowing if you’ll fly or fall. Life requires emotion, Rose; pain begets joy, it’s what makes it all worth it in the end.”

I couldn’t speak. I mean, what do you say to follow up a passionate speech like that?

The Doctor smiled gently, his mouth quirking up on one side, and he brushed my hair behind my ears before dropping his hands from my face. He turned then, and I realized that we’d been standing across from a door this entire time. That was probably the reason he’d stopped walking in the first place.

“Now let’s eat. I may have agreed to procure tea—odd as it is, but don’t think you’re getting me into an apron!” And he marched into the kitchen leaving me staring after him in the hall.

After a moment I followed him into the room and found myself smiling at the haphazard way he was pawing through drawers and cupboards, looking for the necessary materials required to make our dinner. Watching the Doctor flit about the kitchen, pulling his glasses out of his pocket and making a show of peering through them at the box of pasta he was to cook, I realized that I wasn’t sorry any more. Pain begets joy, he’d said. Well, then my life was due to look waaay up.

**~OOO~**

**As always, your reviews make my day! Thanks for taking the time to leave me a little note. :)**


	6. Chapter 6

***walks into room with boombox and sets it on the table* *puts ‘Bring It On’ soundtrack into CD deck and adjusts volume to ‘high’, then turns to face the audience as she presses ‘play’* *static at first, then loud music blares* “Dun dun dun da dun dun dun da dun da dun dun….Ya’ll ready for this?...dun dun da dun!” ;)**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 6 -

            He was talking in his sleep again. I was actually surprised he _had_ slept following our lighthearted pasta dinner tonight. The Doctor had been highly amusing as he’d carefully followed my directions on how to make kraft dinner, and had found a surprising love for the noodles, declaring that he’d have to make a stop in America to pick some up soon. But after tea was over and we’d parted ways for the evening, I’d arrived in my room feeling exhausted and gone straight to bed, and he’d puttered off into the bowels of the TARDIS still hyped up with some hidden source of energy that I couldn’t fathom.  The emotional strain of the day with its erratic ups and downs had taken its toll on my mind and body both, and I’d barely made it into my pajamas before collapsing onto my bed. I didn’t know how long I’d actually slept before the TARDIS woke me, but my room was pitch dark and I jerked back into consciousness with a gasp, disorientated.

            The TARDIS nudged the back of my mind again, a sense of concern and unease filling my head, and I swung my legs over the side of the bed, sliding my toes into my slippers. The TARDIS prodded me again, anxious, like a dog butting her nose against the backs of her master’s knees, urging me forward, and I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, combing my fingers through my hair as I stumbled blindly across the room and into the hallway.

            _Nudge_. Left turn.

            _Nudge_. Right turn.

            _Nudge_. Continue straight for a long while, then _nudge_ , the first door on the right.

            If the TARDIS hadn’t been guiding me I’d probably have walked into a wall, or fallen down a hole into a dungeon—did the TARDIS have a dungeon?—or even stumbled out the front doors and been lost to space (I wasn’t a morning person and at this time of night “morning” seemed a distant and vague concept.) But somehow she’d gotten me to the room where the Doctor was and I was starting to become aware of a sense of urgency beyond the door in front of me. I placed my palm against the metal surface and the TARDIS hummed louder.

            “No!”

            The word was sudden and harsh in the silence, thrusting me into consciousness as abruptly as having cold water dumped over my head. My body jerked forward of its own accord, shoving against the door with my shoulder as my hand twisted the handle, and I all but fell into the room.

            “Please!” This time the word was frantic, agonized, and came from somewhere in the darkness to my left.

            I moved quickly into the room, eyes straining as they tried to compensate for the blackness with the little slice of light flooding in the hallway. “Doctor?” I called out, my voice sounding croaky with sleep.

            “Just…please…” came the Doctor’s voice again, quieter now, somewhere nearby. “I didn’t mean to…just let me try to help…to save…”

            I hurried forward on instinct, moving with only the desperate sound of his voice to guide me, until my shins discovered the metal framing of what I assumed to be the Doctor’s bed, pulling a startled “Ouch!” from my lips and causing the figure on the bed to shift suddenly, rustling sheets or blankets, his voice abruptly cutting off.

            “Doctor?” I hissed, the darkness of the room somehow imparting a feeling of forced quietness on me despite my concern, and I fumbled blindly through the air, trying to locate him by touch. My fingers ghosted across blankets—it was a bed then—and then quite suddenly skimmed over bare skin. I jerked my hand back as if I’d been burned, but I wasn’t fast enough.

            Fingers closed around my wrists with bruising force, gripping tightly and yanking me forward. I cried out in surprise, pulling back instinctively, and the figure on the bed lurched forward with a growl, bedsprings groaning as the pair of us wrestled in the darkness. A second later I was hit with the sensation of falling, wind rushing past me as the Doctor overbalanced and his full weight slammed into me hard, both of us crashing to the floor.

            I gasped as the wind was knocked out of me, twice—my back hitting the floor and the Doctor colliding with my ribs. Above me the Doctor grunted. I couldn’t breathe. I struggled to pull in air and shove the Doctor off me. For a relatively lean man he packed a hell of a wallop.

            “Doctor, it’s me!” I gasped out as he forced my wrists down to the floor on either side of my head. His bare chest was pressed against mine and I could feel heat radiating from his body, his racing hearts vibrating against my ribs. He didn’t answer me though, only tightened his grip on my wrists. I swallowed back a gasp of pain and reminded myself that he wasn’t fully awake yet. Deciding the best course of action was to not spook him further, I locked my limbs into place, stilling my body, and waited for him to come back to himself. After a long minute, during which his ragged breathing gradually slowed, I spoke again, still sounding a bit breathless. “Doctor, it’s me. It’s Rose. I didn’t mean to startle you…”

            Next to my ear, where I imagined the Doctor’s head to be, I heard a hitch in his breathing.  “What…” he began slowly, still sounding sleep-drunk, “are you doing in my bedroom, Rose?”

            “I…” I started, twitching slightly beneath him. The movement seemed to startle him, and he shifted on top of me. I was abruptly very aware of the way his body was pressed against mine.

            “Why are we on the floor?” he asked next, sounding confused.

            “You sort of jumped me.” I answered, and felt him tense against me. I hurried to explain, trying to make light of the whole situation, even while the echoes of the Doctor’s pleas still rang in my ears. “Though, to be fair, I did sneak into your bedchamber in the middle of the night. I’m surprised you didn’t Sonic me for attempting to compromise your virtue.”

            At my mention of the word “virtue” the Doctor seemed to realize just exactly how compromising our current position was—despite neither of us being able to see the other, we could definitely _feel_ each other—and stiffened. A moment later he released my wrists and rolled off me.

I couldn’t help the tiny gasp of relief that slipped past my lips as my lungs re-inflated, and cringed at the curse that passed from the Doctor’s mouth somewhere to my left. I sat up slowly, gingerly rubbing the back of my head where it had cracked against the floor.

“Forgive me,” the Doctor said into the darkness, the words sounding stiff and formal. “I wasn’t expecting….that is, you surprised me and…” He sighed heavily. “Are you alright?”

I could picture the emotions crossing his face: guilt, chagrin…and hurried to assuage him. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, Doctor. I’d have done the same thing if someone had been stumbling round my bed in the middle of the night. I once went into mum’s room after she’d been sleeping for hours—it was late, maybe 2AM, and I’d heard a noise—thought it was a burglar or something—and she nearly clocked me with the bedside lamp.” I bit off my rambling, when he didn’t break in with a sarcastic remark about my mother—normally one of his favorite pastimes—abruptly feeling ridiculous. “Guess my reflexes are a bit rusty.” I added lamely.

The Doctor said nothing to this and I wished again I could see the look on his face. As the silence dragged on I felt more and more awkward sitting on the floor in the dark. I pictured the Doctor staring in my general direction a few feet away, and could only imagine what he thought I was doing here…especially after his big speech last night. He probably thought I’d misinterpreted the whole thing. I felt my face burn with embarrassment.

“Doctor, I—I didn’t come…I mean, I’m not here because…” I finally said, feeling like my whole body was on fire now. I mean, if anyone should be apologizing for this whole fiasco it was me—or maybe the TARDIS, whose fault it was that I was in here in the first place. “The TARDIS woke me up,” I blurted, seizing onto the subject change like a life-preserver. There was a creak nearby, and I imagined the Doctor leaning back against the bed. “She was worried about you.” I paused, waiting for him to brush it off. The Doctor continued his silent vigil and I pressed on. “I am too. I heard you, again…” I swallowed hard. “I mean, you were…” Again I couldn’t bring myself to say the words “You were crying out in your sleep.” Instead I asked softly, “What were you dreaming about?”

I’d voiced the question hesitantly, sure that he wouldn’t answer, so when he spoke I was surprised.

“A lot of things,” he said, the words dropping like stones into the silence. “None of them pleasant.”

I wanted to come sit beside him, comfort him in some way, but I wasn’t sure how well that would go over so I didn’t move. The Doctor’s bed was tucked into an alcove around a corner from the door, but the light reached far enough into the room that I could see it spark in his dark eyes.

“You were…saying things…” I hedged, wondering if he’d realized, or remembered, the words he’d been shouting out, trapped in the throes of his nightmares. “Were you—was it the Time War you were dreaming about?”

The Doctor was silent so long that I wondered if I’d crossed a line by bringing that up. Or maybe he’d simply fallen back asleep. Now that I’d discovered the only danger in the Doctor’s room was in his own head—not an attacking alien race that had somehow snuck aboard the TARDIS in the middle of the night, the weight of sleep was pressing down on me again, too.

“Among other things,” he said a last. “I’ve done a lot of things in my life, Rose Tyler, wrought a lot of destruction. It doesn’t make for very happy dreams.”

             I moved then, following the low rumble of his voice and crawling forward on my hands and knees until I was crouched beside him. “I know you, Doctor,” I said softly, voice firm as I held his eyes in the darkness. “You’ve done more good than bad in your lifetime than anyone could ever hope to accomplish.”

            “Is one sin less grievous than another, Rose Tyler?” he replied, sounding drained. “Just because you define some of the things I’ve done as ‘good’ doesn’t mean that the actions that are defined as ‘evil’ are cancelled out.”

            I scooted closer, not quite touching him, but sitting right next to him against the bedframe now. His bare chest rose and fell regularly, his breathing back to normal now, and his long legs were stretched out in front of him, clad in what I could now just barely make out as blue and white striped pajama bottoms. He’d leaned his head back, resting it against the matrass. I placed my hand on the floor next to his, our fingers barely an inch apart.

            “I think that the scale of the universe is tipped in your favor.” I insisted quietly. “And that anyone who says otherwise doesn’t really know you.”

            There was the sound of shifting in the darkness, rustling fabric against the floor, the creak of the bed, and then the Doctor’s large hand slipped over mine, warmth radiating over my fingers as they pressed against the cold floor. “You always see the best in me, Rose Tyler.” He squeezed my fingers.

            “It’s not hard to do.” I murmured back, going very still when the Doctor suddenly twisted his hand, gripping mine with long fingers as he gently stroked his thumb over the inside of my wrist. A shiver ran down my body from head to toes.

            To be fair, the Doctor probably wasn’t aware what that sort of touch did to me, but I could only manage a few seconds of it before I extricated my hand as gently as possible and pushed up onto my knees.

            “Are you ok now?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable. “Only, I should probably let you get back to bed.” I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to continue to let him touch my hand that way. Gently, tenderly…wanted to believe that the feeling behind the action was more than unconscious soothing. But it wasn’t. He’d made that perfectly clear. 

            “I’m alright.”

            “Ok then,” I said, standing up and looking down at him propped against his bed on the floor. “Goodnight.”

            “Goodnight, Rose,” the Doctor replied. “I’m sorry the TARDIS disturbed you with nothing.”

            I hovered in front of him for a moment, the words “Anything to do with you is not ‘nothing’ to me,” on the edge of my lips, but all I said was “Goodnight” again, and then hurried quickly from the room.

**~OOO~**

            The next morning the Doctor acted like our encounter the previous night hadn’t happened. He bounced about the TARDIS tossing out Times and planets for us to visit, pausing now and again to reconsider certain places when he’d suddenly remembered that he’d left certain societies under dubious circumstances, and brightening again when he recalled civilizations where his welcome had been lavish and intricate. I could see the tiredness behind his eyes when he paused for breath though, and knew he was working overtime to smooth over the awkwardness of last night without actually bringing it up.

            I felt off this morning too. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the little things the Doctor did. He was in all likelihood only trying to make me feel comfortable around him again, but every time he paused his erratic behavior and any amount of seriousness crept in, his little gestures, small touches—like his hand last night—only served to intensify the uncomfortable feelings I felt awash in. I wasn’t sorry for confessing my feelings, but I was sorry that the dynamic of our relationship seemed so off-kilter since I’d done so. I just wanted things to go back to normal again.

            I watched the Doctor flit about the console with a mug of strong tea pressed between my palms. The wafting steam caused his image to waver every now and then and I sighed, sipping deeply and leaning against the wall. I felt wrecked this morning. I hadn’t been able to fall back asleep  after I’d left the Doctor’s room, and had spent a good fifteen minutes grumbling at the TARDIS for waking me up in the first place. The TARDIS had chosen to ignore my protests, of course, which I’d gathered from the way her hum had translated into a “Lalala, I can’t hear you!” vibe the longer I muttered at the ceiling from my bed. She wasn’t sorry for making me check on her master, and if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t either. Though I wished that I could do more to ease his inner turmoil.

            “Doctor?” called out, pushing off the wall and strolling up the ramp to where he was pressing his nose to a screen and squinting at whatever was on it.

            “Yes?” he asked, not looking at me as frowned at the screen and then swiped his hand across it, clearing the image so he could search for something else.

            I perched on the edge of the jump seat, still cradling my tea close. “Has there been any reply yet?”

            I didn’t need to specify what I was talking about. There was only one thing it could be. The Doctor’s hand jerked against the screen where he’d been tapping out some complex string of coding, moving subconsciously toward the psychic paper in his jacket pocket. He didn’t have to say anything. I could tell that there’s been nothing.

            “I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.” I said quickly. “Maybe he can’t respond right away. They could be watching him. Or maybe they took his book and he hasn’t’ been able to get the message.”

            The Doctor’s hands had stilled over the screen but he didn’t turn to look at me. “Maybe,” was all he said. Neither of us mentioned the fact that the Time Lord with the Acuites might not be responding because of ulterior motives.

            The Doctor returned to tapping at the screen and I found myself staring at the curve of his back as he leaned over the console, noting the way the cut of his suit jacket fit his lean muscles. He was dressed casually today: brown suit with thin red pinstripes, a brown t-shirt layered under a wine-red button down, open at the collar. His hair was impeccable as usual, which I was a little jealous of—why couldn’t my hair look like a shampoo commercial when I’d just rolled out of bed, instead of the rat’s nest it usually was? Damn, Time Lord genes.

            I slid off the jump seat and moved up next to him. “Want a cuppa?” I asked, nudging his shoulder with mine since both my hands were occupied with holding my own oversized mug of steaming liquid.

            At my touch the Doctor flinched away. Startled, I also jerked back, sloshing tea over the side of my mug and scalding my hands. I yelped, the mug slipping from my fingers and sailing toward the floor in what felt like slow-motion. It bounced off the side of the console and smashed, showering the metal grating below our feet with shards of ceramic and lemon-scented water. We both leaped backwards, the Doctor slamming up against the console with a shout of surprise and me tripping backwards and sitting down hard on the jump seat. I stared at the remains of my tea, heart beating hard. Ok then, I guess the Doctor hadn’t gotten over our run-in last night after all. 

            “I—I’m sorry!” I said quickly, jumping up and dropping to my knees on the floor, frantically trying to gather the remains of the mug and tea leaves into a soggy pile and scoop them into my palm. My face was on fire again, and I felt a suspicious pricking at the backs of my eyes. God, why was it so awkward all of the time now?

            There was a thump across from me then, and I froze, one hand full of tea leaves, as my eyes landed on the Doctor’s knees. He reached for my hand and I pulled back, fisting my fingers tightly on my lap. Tinted water dribbled out between my fingers, squeezed from the tea leaves crushed in my fist. I kept my head down.

            “Rose…” He said my name gently, voice full of remorse. He retracted his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to react that way.” I could see movement in my peripheral vision and knew that he was rubbing the back of his head.

            “I broke your cup.” I muttered at my knees. My fingers were throbbing from the hot water and I wanted to go find cold water to run over them.

            “Who needs cups? Cups are for morons that don’t know how to drink with their hands and not get it all over themselves. Straight from the source is best, Rose Tyler, no muss, no fuss!” His voice sounded puffed up and haughty, and I could imagine the look on his face: wide eyes, raised brows, an anxious smile.

            “Right.” I rose to my feet, keeping my head averted from him, hiding behind my hair again. The Doctor stood with me, keeping the space of the ruined tea between us. “I need to go, um, take care of this.” I gestured vaguely with my left hand, three fingers of which were blazing red against my normally pale skin. I beat a hasty retreat from the console room, making for my bedroom and the bathroom inside it.

**~OOO~**

            I twisted the tap on awkwardly, trying to move my scalded fingers as little as possible, and then bit my lip as I moved them under the running water. My hands throbbed a little as the icy water hit my skin, but gradually the heat numbed and my fingers began to feel better. I left the bathroom after a few minutes and flopped down on the couch on the far side of my room.

            Was this how it was going to be from now on? One little kiss and now both of us could barely stand to be in the same room as each other, let alone touch? I felt as if that simple motion had broken something between us, changed our relationship irreparably. Maybe…maybe it was time to take a break from travelling with the Doctor after all. He kept saying that the Acumen was dangerous beyond comprehension, and as I hadn’t fared well at all during my last encounter with it, maybe I _should_ just let him handle it?

            I hugged one of the throw pillows on the couch to my chest, wrapping my arms around it. My heart hurt even to consider it. I didn’t want to go. Even as much as staying here was obviously hurting both of us. I could tell the Doctor felt under pressure act like nothing was wrong, but the strain was getting to him too, causing him to crack, like the incident with me simply bumping up against his shoulder just now. He knew how I felt and it was killing him trying to go on like we had before. He was just far too kind to force me out.

**~OOO~**

            I stayed in my room most of the day. When I finally emerged, sometime in the afternoon, I didn’t see the Doctor anywhere. He wasn’t in the console room, which was the first place I checked, or the library, or the pool—he might have been in his bedroom, but there was no way I was venturing back in there again. I didn’t look much further though, because I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to see him. I hadn’t decided if I was going to stay or leave yet, but I couldn’t stand to stay in my room any longer so I was reduced to wandering about the ship, lost in my own thoughts.

I was staring out the windows of the TARDIS’ front doors, watching a swirling galaxy spiral purple and white in the vastness of space, when I heard footsteps behind me. I didn’t turn, but I knew that the Doctor knew I was aware of his presence.

“How’re your hands?” he asked quietly.

I shifted in front of the glass, curling my fingers in on themselves. “Better.”

“Listen, Rose, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make this so awkward for you,” he started, rushing words into the silence, as if filling it would make it less oppressive. “I realize I may have reacted poorly after last night—though the TARDIS assures me it wasn’t your fault!” he added quickly, and I could feel a faint hum in the back of my mind, the equivalent of a nod.

“It’s not a problem.” I replied dully, watching the galaxy fade into the distance as the TARDIS blazed on through space. I could hear him moving closer and tensed, half praying he wouldn’t touch me, and half hoping he would.

“It is though,” the Doctor insisted. “I can’t help but notice that you’re no longer comfortable on the TARDIS…or with me…” The last few words he tacked on almost as an afterthought, but I knew that he felt them as keenly as I did.

            I kept my back to him but cut him off before he could make any more apologies, unable to bare any more guilt for making him feel like he was the problem here. “You barely look at me, Doctor,” I said finally, feeling hollow as I spoke, as if the words spilling out were draining me of feeling. “You act as if you can hardly stand to be in the same room with me. Oh, I know you’re putting in a valiant effort not to show it, but it’s obvious I’ve made you uncomfortable on your own ship and you’re just too kind to come out and say it. So let me do it for you.” I turned around, pressing my back to the doors and staring him straight in his eyes. “If you’d rather I went back to London, just say so. Because it hurts, Doctor, when I look into your eyes and see that you don’t want me here.”

            The Doctor took a sudden step forward, closing the distance between us. He looked upset, mouth pinched in a tight frown, thick brows drawn together as he looked down into my eyes, holding my desperate gaze. Without blinking, he reached a hand out to gently touch my cheek, trailing his knuckles feather-soft down the side of my face. I went completely still, barely breathing. He brushed a stray lock of hair behind my ear then, before slowly sliding his big hand down to my neck…where it stayed.

I couldn’t speak. What was he doing, this man, the master of the stoic look and oblivious mind? I swallowed hard. The Doctor had always been a perfect gentleman, almost to the point of monkhood, our entire time together. He’d never done anything more intimate than hold my hand—heck, I had always been the one to initiate hugs, such as they were—if I hadn’t been present for the time he’d snogged Madam de Pompadour I would have wondered if he was even capable of having these sorts of feelings.

“Not want you here?” he repeated finally, and he sounded honestly surprised. “Who, that has ever spent any amount of time with you, Rose Tyler, could not want to be around you?”

Afraid that any sudden movement might wake him to what he was doing, I stared straight ahead, ripping my gaze from those dangerous brown eyes and locking it onto the buttons of his red shirt, as the Doctor slowly raised his other hand to the opposite side of my neck, thumbs brushing gently against my now-flushed cheeks. I could feel heat radiating from his fingertips and was certain he was very aware of the rapid fluttering of the pulse in my throat. I made myself draw in air, trying to calm my racing heart.

“Words, Doctor,” I forced out, my voice slightly unsteady. I curled my fingers into fists at my sides, trying to concentrate on the minute sting of my nails digging into my palms instead of the sensation of the Doctor’s thumbs as they continued to trace barely-there circles on my cheeks. The Doctor still looked more concerned that he’d offended me than anything else. “You say that, but you know you don’t want me here for the same reasons that I want to be here.” I swallowed hard. The feeling of having him so close was an almost physical pain. “And I don’t think I can stand to stay here, with you, knowing that you can’t ever want me that way.”

I finally lifted my eyes to his, and in that second I watched as their brown depths darkened to near-black. His hands stilled on my face as something shifted behind his eyes, and he seemed to come to a decision.

“I may be a Time Lord, Rose Tyler,” he said after a long pause, and his voice had changed. He sounded strained, as if he was trying to hold himself back from something. “But I am still a _man_.”

            Very slowly and deliberately, the Doctor lowered his head toward me and I felt my heart stutter as my hazy eyes automatically moved to his mouth. He paused then, millimeters from my lips, seeming to gather himself together. His warm breath blew into my face and I stopped breathing altogether. Another long second passed, and then, just when I thought he wouldn’t go through with it, he was kissing me.

            He held himself carefully away from my body, his hands on my neck firm yet gentle, as if he thought I might break. He was hesitant at first; his mouth, slow and soft on mine, was curious, almost experimental. I held perfectly still, shock rooting me to the ground, lips parting automatically as he moved his against them. What was he _doing_?

The Doctor’s kisses were sweet and gentle, and I tried to respond in kind, though I felt my entire body come alive at his touch, trembling beneath his hands. Somewhere in the back of my mind I worried that he might take my sudden shaking as a negative reaction, but he didn’t seem to notice.

            Somehow my hands found themselves pressed against the Doctor’s chest, and beneath each palm I could feel the rapid thrumming of twin hearts through layers of fabric. I was marveling at the curious feeling of multiple heartbeats when the sensation of a hand gliding down my back elicited a strangled sound from my lips and jolted my attention back to more important things. I leaned into him readily, pressing my body hard against his and sliding my hands up to run them through his thick, silky hair.

            At my touch the Doctor made a low sort of growl in the back of his throat, hands tightening convulsively around me. He tangled his free hand roughly in the hair at the nape of my neck, long fingers cradling the back of my head and angling it so he had better access to my mouth. At the same instant his kisses became less gentle. His lips were suddenly insistent, nudging mine apart so that he could deepen his kiss. I gave a little jolt of surprise when I felt his tongue slide over mine, startled at his boldness, but I didn’t pull away.

            My body burned with the heat of his touch and I felt deliciously dizzy. Something hot and not unpleasant coiled in the pit of my stomach, and I pressed closer. When the Doctor pulled back to move his mouth to my neck, I found myself panting for air, slumping against his chest when my trembling knees gave out. I felt his arms tighten around me, muscles tensing as he supported my weight, and if he hadn’t slid a leg between mine as he pressed me back against the TARDIS wall I was sure I would have collapsed to the floor right then and there.

I couldn’t think; the sensation of the Doctor’s mouth, hot against my skin, drove all conscious thought from my brain aside from…… more…… now…… please……

He kissed his way along my collarbone, tongue teasing and tasting, and then back up my jaw, finally returning his mouth to my searching lips as I clutched weakly at his neck.

            I could feel my heart working overtime and thought that it was vaguely unfair that the Doctor had _two_ hearts to help himself hold it together while I only had the one, and it was beating hard enough that I wondered why it hadn’t leaped from my chest yet. All at once I felt the Doctor’s hands slide down my back and settle near my waist, jerking my hips hard against his as he pushed me roughly up against the wall, a low, animalistic sound rumbling deep in this throat. Caught off guard at his sudden aggressiveness, I sucked in a shuddering gasp against his mouth, my fingers against his chest knotting convulsively about the fabric of his shirt, nails digging in. This was the Doctor with all shields down, no morals or ridiculous rules holding him back, and he both frightened and intrigued me.

            Without warning I found myself alone against the wall, breathing hard as my suddenly free hands scrambled for purchase behind me. The TARDIS was a concave structure on the inside, not exactly smooth but not really with any handholds either, and I ended up stumbling back against the wall, a startled cry of protest tearing from my lips when I nearly fell over in my confusion.

            My body felt cold with the loss of the Doctor’s body heat and I started to tremble now for a completely different reason. I opened my eyes, blinking dazedly, and turned my head slowly from side to side, scanning the TARDIS to see where the Doctor had disappeared to.

            I found him several feet back from me, observing me with wide, rather wild-looking brown eyes. He had the oddest look on his face, eyeing me as if he thought I might spook at the smallest movement. Still trying to catch my breath, I looked him up and down, taking in the way his usually neat pinstripe suit was rumpled, and the buttons on his red shirt were halfway-undone. I wondered if I’d done that, though I couldn’t remember doing so. I noticed then that the Doctor was holding himself very still, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he struggled to get his breathing under control. His hands were clenched into tight fists at his sides.

            “Doctor?” I asked, confused, and my voice came out very small in the quietness of the room. I took a stumbling step toward him.

            “No!” he shouted, his voice hoarse, and he threw a hand out in front of himself as if to ward me off. He swallowed hard, then continued. “Don’t move. Don’t come any closer, Rose. Please.”

            That last word, _please_ , came out in a desperate plea, and I pulled up short, just steps away from the wall, one hand outstretched toward him. A sudden, searing feeling of rejection cut into me. I tried to push back the tears that abruptly filled my eyes at his words.

            “W-what? Why? I don’t understand…..did I…..did I do something wrong?” I forced the words past trembling lips, my skin still flushed with the echo of his hands. On the heels of this question other words rose to my mind, sudden and unflinching in their certainty: _He doesn’t want you._

            When I looked up again, the Doctor seemed to have gotten himself back under control and was regarding me silently, still from halfway across the room.

            “I—I’m sorry,” he said, his voice almost back to normal, but I heard the slight waver in his words. “I…forgive me, Rose Tyler…I shouldn’t have—I went too far…"

I swallowed hard, forcing back the lump that had risen in my throat, but a tear slipped past my guard and slid down one cheek. I pulled in a steadying breath as I swiped the back of my hand hastily across my face. I accidently met the Doctor’s eyes as I did so, and saw his gaze tighten perceptively before a wall dropped over his expression. He looked away.

“I should take you home.”

            Home; the place I’d just been considering going, somehow it felt like a jail sentence now. Mechanically I began to straighten my clothing, tugging my shirt back into place and running my fingers through my hair, anything to avoid looking at him. The Doctor seemed to be having similar sorts of restless feelings because he turned and strode quickly across the floor and up the ramp to the console, straightening his jacket and re-buttoning his shirt as he went. After a brief moment of hesitation, I followed him up.

When I moved past him to take my usual place on the jump seat, I saw his back stiffen, though he made a valiant effort to hide it from me. In turn, I worked to hide the sting of his rejection. I set my face into a neutral expression and picked up my purple-blue leather jacket from where it had been draped over the back of the chair, pulling it on and zipping it up tightly. Then I leaned against the backrest and drew my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. I could have run off to hide in my bedroom, but I was too thrown by the whole encounter to make it any further across the room then the seat where I was currently huddled.

What had just happened between us? Had I really just been snogging the Doctor in the middle of the TARDIS? Had _he_ really been the one to initiate the encounter? My mind spun but I found that I couldn’t speak just now, even if I had been able to find suitable words. So instead I just sat there, staring at my knees, and waiting.

            The Doctor hovered about the TARDIS controls, pulling levers and kicking things in agitation when the old time machine didn’t work exactly the way he wanted it to at any precise moment, muttering under his breath the entire time. I noted how he studiously refused to catch my gaze again, keeping his back to me as much as possible, and couldn’t deny that that action hurt. The Doctor moved about like an erratic professor, stabbing at buttons then ranting nonsense at the TARDIS when we abruptly shot into the Vortex and the whole machine shuddered hard enough to nearly topple him onto my lap. I felt curiously apart from the whole scene, like I was watching the pair of us from above, as if in a dream.

            The TARDIS eventually materialized in a park down the street from my flat and the Doctor turned to look at me at last. The expression on his face was strange. He looked almost…nervous?

            He cleared his throat. “We’re here,” he said awkwardly, as if I hadn’t noticed. Then, not quite meeting my gaze, “I would appreciate it, Rose, if you didn’t mention my, er, indiscretion to Jackie.”

            I stared at him. His _indiscretion_? He made it sound as if kissing me had been a huge mistake. As if he’d been reckless and rash, and, for all the worlds out there, was praying that my mum never found out. Well, he was right about one thing: regardless of how willing I might have been at the time, Jackie Tyler wouldn’t be happy about it.

            “Sure,” I murmured, getting to my feet and walking numbly toward the exit. “Not a peep out of me, Doctor.” The words came out with a bitter undertone and yet, distracted as he was, I wondered if the Doctor even noticed. I avoided looking at him as I exited the TARDIS, stepping out into the lush, green, park grounds, blinking in the bright sunlight; I didn’t think I could stand it if he had looked relieved.

            After a few steps I turned to look back over my shoulder, and found him standing in the doorway of the TARDIS, hands in his trouser pockets, coat flapping gently in the breeze. His face was careful, neutral, like mine. I turned all the way around, still feeling surreal. We stared at each other for a long moment, neither one willing to break the silence. To bring the ending into being.

            “Well, I guess I’ll see you around then,” I said at last, forcing a bravado I didn’t feel.

He nodded. “Say hello to Mickey for me.”

“Sure.” The wind blew my hair into my eyes and I brushed it back. The Doctor gave me a final nod and then turned around and reentered the TARDIS, closing the door behind him. A few seconds later the familiar wheezing sound of the TARDIS dematerializing filled the air around me, whipping the gentle breeze into a frenzy and tossing my long blonde hair into my face again. This time I didn’t push it away.

I stood for a long time in the same spot where the Doctor had vanished, feeling a cold sort of numbness creep over my body. I’d had boyfriends in the past of course, Mickey among them, but none of them had made me feel the way the Doctor did. With him I felt absolutely free. As if I could do anything, say anything, try anything, and he would always keep me completely safe. Which was where I’d made my first mistake. Allowing myself to feel so free with the Doctor had caused me to forget something very important: the one you love the most has the greatest power to hurt you.

The worst part about this whole experience was that it was obvious he’d been trying to give me what I’d wanted. I had felt it in the way he’d handled my body, careful at first and fierce by the end…but the end _had_ come, and he’d pulled away. He cared about me, that much I knew, and so he’d decided to attempt the experiment. But when he’d realized it wasn’t working, he’d stopped. I supposed that he’d thought that was a kindness on some level, not that it mattered now. It was over. He’d tried, and failed, to reciprocate my feelings, with the result being my abandonment back in London.

When this realization crashed over me I couldn’t hold it together any longer. I felt the tears come, hot and fast, sliding down my cheeks too quickly for me to make any real attempt to brush them away. The pain hit next. I gasped with the severity of it, wrapping one arm around my stomach and hunching over as misery coursed through me. I covered my face with my other hand, trying to stifle the loud sob that caught in my throat. In that moment I felt childish and young, and so, so human. And for the first time that felt like a bad thing. Because if being human meant the Doctor couldn’t ever feel for me what I felt for him, then I didn’t know what to do with myself.

After an age, I shook myself out of the stupor that had settled over me the longer I stood in the corner of the park. I had to get home; mum would be waiting like she always was. She never knew exactly when to expect me, so she might not even be in at the moment, but I had my key and it was a Tuesday afternoon, so I figured my chances were good.

When I reached our flat the door was unlocked. I could hear the sounds of the telly going in the background, accompanied by mum’s talking back to some talk show host or other, telling off a studio guest for being ridiculous about something. I felt a tiny smile tug at my lips. At least some things never changed.

Slowly I raised my hand to the door and gave a slight knock so I wouldn’t startle her by bursting into the flat, then pushed the door open and stepped inside.

“Hi mum, I’m home.” I called out, and heard her voice cut off in the middle of a rant about how the government was using the tax payer’s money to fund celebrity rehab programs. Then there was the sound of the TV remote clattering onto the coffee table and the stamping of running feet…and Jackie Tyler burst into the entryway.

“Rose!” she cried, a huge smile on her face. “‘bout time you remembered you have a mum on this planet!”

She threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly, muttering into my ear that three months was far too long between visits. I hugged her back, clinging perhaps a little tighter than usual, realizing that even if I couldn’t tell her why my heart was breaking, having my mother hold me could do wonders for helping me start to heal.

“Sorry, mum. I promise I won’t stay away so long next time.” And I gave her a slightly watery smile that she frowned at.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded immediately, taking a step back so that she could get a better look at my face. “What’s happened? What’s that nutter Doctor gone and done now? Taken you to some planet with hellfire and brimstone? Aliens with laser guns? Nothing but daytime telly?”

I laughed at that, and it felt good. I needed this, time alone with my normal life. “No, nothing like that. I’m just happy to see you, mum. Has Mickey been coming round? I asked him to keep an eye on you.”

Mum rolled her eyes at my blatant subject change, but let it pass as she turned to head into the kitchen. “Comes by every Wednesday and Saturday like clockwork. Sometimes he even helps with the tea. He’s a good bloke, Rose.”

I followed her into the kitchen where I saw she had tea laid for one. She busied herself setting a second place at our tiny kitchen table and I dropped into a chair to watch. “I know he is, mum.”

“Much more grounded than that Doctor, always jumping about, never able to sit still more than a few seconds,” she continued, her head in the fridge as she pulled out a plate of roast beef and a jar of mustard then carried them to the table. I knew mum missed Mickey, but that part of my life was over. The fact that Mickey and I had been able to rebuild our friendship meant a lot to me, and probably a lot more to my mother, but I knew that it would never be more than that again.

“I’m glad he’s taking care of you,” I put in, offering up the first real smile I’d managed in what felt like days. She finished setting the table and sat down across from me. “I missed you mum, a lot.”

She raised a hand and reached across the salad bowl to cover mine, then she gave it a squeeze the way only mothers can. “I’ll always be here when you come back, Rose.”

“I know.” I felt the tears threaten once more and swallowed hard.

“Want to watch some daft sod try and convince his girlfriend he didn’t cheat on her with her best mate?” Mum asked finally, nodding toward the muted television across the room where a burly security guard was holding back a flailing girl with blue hair and tattoos. She was screaming silently behind the screen, her face red with anger. I knew how she felt. My own emotions pent up inside me.

“Sure, mum.” I offered up a halfhearted smile that felt plastic on my face. “Let’s eat in front of the telly; front row seats for the upcoming brawl, yeah? My money’s on the walking ink blot.”

Mum scoffed. “No chance! That one’s the trollop he cheated with. You should see the girlfriend, some suburban girly-girl with nails that could cut glass. She doesn’t look like much, but earlier she ducked the other bouncer and nailed the cheating bastard right on the kisser! Knocked out a tooth!”

We gathered our plates and headed for the couch together. As we settled in for a night of trashy television and mother-daughter bonding, I felt some of the tension that had been coiling in my muscles start to release. A break from the Doctor would do us both some good, I decided. Maybe the next time he came by for me—if he came back—I’d be able to apologize for forcing him into such undesirable actions due to my ridiculous human hormones. Maybe, if I could word it right, he wouldn’t just leave me here.

Maybe…

**~OOO~**

**This chapter came pretty quickly to me, though it pretty much destroyed me emotionally. Was it hot enough for you? ;) It’s just getting started kiddies! See you next time! Please R &R. It’s how authors eat. **


	7. Chapter 7

***sneaks into room, hides behind potted plant and peeks through branches* Um…please don’t hurt me…it’s not _really_ my fault that the Doctor freaked himself out… Also, can I just say that I adore all you wonderful reviewers? Because I do. A lot. *grabs you close and ruffles your hair***

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 7 -

I could tell that mum knew I wasn’t telling her something, but she didn’t say a word about it the whole evening as we watched episode after episode of mind-numbing television. She puttered about the flat as usual the next day too, only popping into my room some time in early afternoon to remind me that we’d be having a guest for tea. I’d been laying there most of the day, staring out the window and hugging a pillow to my chest, moping like the embodiment of a love-scorned teenager and hating myself every second of it—and in retrospect I should have realized who it would be considering it was Wednesday—but my mind was elsewhere, so when there was a loud knock on my bedroom door around four o’clock, I nearly fell off my bed in surprise.

            Heart racing, I pushed myself into a sitting position, wide eyes locked on the door as it started to swing open. When a dark-skinned boy with a leather jacket and wide grin poked his head around the corner, eyes skimming the room until they landed on me, I felt my heart sink—and immediately felt awash in guilt for feeling that way. Of course it wasn’t _him_ , the Doctor would never use the front door if he could help it. He’d land the TARDIS in the middle of my room—not like he hadn’t done it before…

            Mickey pushed the door all the way open and stepped into the room as I pushed off the bed and moved toward him. The cheery look on his face faltered as he got his first good look at me, but when I launched myself at his chest his arms came up and wrapped around me automatically and without hesitation.

            “I missed you so much!” I mumbled into his neck, hugging him close. I could feel his surprise at my greeting, considering our relationship had only recently made it back into the friend-zone, but Mickey was nothing if not able to roll with the punches—after all, he’d spent a good deal of our relationship being thrown into bizarre situations as I’d dragged him around after the Doctor.

            “Heeeey Rose!” Mickey said a bit hesitantly, then made a valiant attempt at his normal charm. “I wish all the girls expressed their love for me as readily as you do!”

            I laughed a little shakily, burying my face in his shoulder for a moment, then pulled back far enough to see his face. “I’m sorry I haven’t been ‘round to see you lately, Mickey.”

            He kept one hand against my back while the other rose to stoke my hair. He grinned down at me. “Too busy chasing stars?”

            _Too soon_ , I thought, and felt my lower lip tremble. Mickey’s keen eyes spotted it right off and he opened his mouth to say something. I turned away, stepping out of his arms and winding my fingers through his. “Let’s go grab chips for supper, alright?”

            Mickey glanced between me and the hallway, obviously thinking of mum. “What about your mum?” he asked, confirming my suspicions. “I did promise Jackie a Mickey Smith specialty tonight!”

            I smirked at him, recalling his cooking ability. “Bangers and mash again, is it?”

            Mickey snorted, looking offended. “I’ll have you know that my culinary skills have vastly improved whilst you’ve been off gallivanting through the universe!”

            I raised an eyebrow, daring him to prove it. “Mmmhmm?”

            He caved. “Buuuuut I’m sure your mum can wait til the weekend to be blown away by Chef Mickey’s latest creations. Chips on me, alright?”

            I let Mickey lead me down the hallway, hand warm and firm around mine, and called to mum that we were grabbing a bite down the road and would be back later. I couldn’t help but notice the way mum’s eyes lit up when she spied our entwined fingers, but didn’t have the time or inclination to stop and explain to her that there was nothing to be read into by it.

            Mickey was familiar and safe, and above all just a normal bloke. And I really needed normal in my life right now. He let me hold his hand all the way down the street to the tiny take-away shop where we’d grabbed dinner so many times in the past, then lead me through the park to a bench by large stone fountain to eat. We’d sat here countless times when we’d been dating, and even though we were no longer together that way this place still felt special to me.

            We ate in silence for a few minutes before I broke the quiet. “How’s Jessa?”

            Mickey glanced over at me, mouth full of fish. He swallowed then turned his gaze to the gently plashing water in the basin of the fountain across from us. “Enjoying Dover, I expect.”

            I raised an eyebrow at him. “Bit of a commute, don’t you think? Unless you—you haven’t moved in with her, have you?” The last bit hurt. Mickey had been seeing Jessa for only a few months, much shorter than our relationship, and we hadn’t progressed that far when we’d been together. Mickey’s head swiveled back toward me.

            “What? Blimey Rose! No! I meant she’s moved back to her parents’ flat.” He flickered a glance between his remaining chips and me. “We broke up a few weeks ago.”

            Curiosity burned inside me but I didn’t pry. “Tough break.” I offered, and Mickey shrugged, popping the last of his supper into his mouth and crumpling up the now-empty wrappers. He’d always been a fast eater.

            “It was at the time, I guess. But the fit wasn’t right. When two people are really meant to be together you can just feel it, you know?” His gaze on me stayed just a fraction too long, and I looked away.

            This time I was the one to gaze at the fountain as if it held all the answers. “Yeah…” I mumbled, not hungry any more. I could feel Mickey’s eyes on me.

            “Rose?” he asked, a bit hesitantly. “You’d tell me if there was something wrong, right? You know that I’m always here for you, even if we aren’t going out any more. Mates before dates, as you once said...” He elbowed me playfully in the side, trying to get a smile out of my melancholy mood.

            I turned back to face him, glancing up through thick lashes, a sad attempt at a smile on my suddenly trembling lips. I watched as Mickey’s face fell, his smooth brow creasing and his eyes darkening with concern…and something like anger.

            “Rose? What happened?”

            I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t confess the rollercoaster my life had become the last couple of weeks in the TARDIS. What would he think of me? Our relationship had fallen apart because of my infatuation with the Doctor; why should I have any right to sympathy from the person at the very top of my Scorned Lovers list?

            My eyes abruptly filled with tears and I blinked hard, trying to force them back, but Mickey saw. Without another word he leaned across the bench and gently plucked the flimsy cardboard container that held the remains of my dinner out of my trembling hands and placed it on the bench to my left. I could feel my cheeks flushing with the strain of holding back a sob and knotted my fingers on my lap to try and disguise their shaking. My supper taken care of, Mickey slid across the remaining few inches of the wooden bench until he was pressed up against me, knee to knee, then he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me against his chest and tucking my head against his shoulder. I curled into the warmth of him, fingers clutching at his soft t-shirt, inhaling London, and security, and friendship, and all the smells and sensations that went with _him_ , and I let go.

            The longer I cried the tighter I could feel Mickey’s arms become around my body. After an age I felt the ache in my chest ease the tiniest bit, and I attempted to reign in my pity fest. Mickey didn’t say anything for a long time, letting me get myself back under control. It wasn’t until the sounds I was making were more hiccups and less like the end of the world that he said anything at all. When he did speak however, he pulled no punches.

            “What did he do, Rose?”

            There was no mistaking who he meant, but I couldn’t make the name pass my lips. When I didn’t answer I could feel Mickey’s embrace loosen slightly, as he tried to get a look at my face.

            “Rose?” he pressed, sounding slightly anxious now. “What happened?”

            Slowly I lifted my head to meet his eyes. Oh Mickey, so sweet and understanding and in every way _normal_ , how could I tell him I’d gone and fallen in love with the mad, time-travelling alien man from a planet he’d never even heard of? The man I’d left him for.

The man who’d crushed my heart.

            “I…I…” I tried, and my voice trembled violently. I stopped myself, took a steadying breath and tried again. “I did something stupid, Mickey.”

            He held my eyes, his gaze as soft and warm. He gently brushed my hair back from my tear-stained face, his fingers lingering against my cheek. There was something like longing in his eyes. “What did you do?”

            The question was gentle but I still flinched back from it. I dropped my gaze. “I kissed him.”

            To his credit Mickey only cringed a little. Then he shifted on the bench, his voice low in my ear. “And what did he do when you did that?” He paused for half a heartbeat. “Or do I want to know?”

            I almost laughed. Almost. I swallowed back the hysterical impulse and continued on. “At first he pushed me away. It was obvious he didn’t feel the same way. But later…” My voice trailed off. Later….

_A memory of heat…strong hands gripping my body…lips on mine…on my throat…_

“Later?” Mickey prompted, after several seconds had passed.

I shook myself out of the memory. “Later he…tried.”

I couldn’t make myself admit that I’d pushed him into it. That I’d practically threatened to leave the TARDIS if he couldn’t care about me in the exact way I wanted. That he’d tried to force feelings that obviously weren’t there into existence and ended up disgusted with me.

Mickey didn’t need to hear that part, which was fine, as his reaction to the three words I’d managed to get out caused enough trouble to be getting on with.

Mickey jerked away from me, his hands falling from around my back to grip my forearms almost painfully. He bent his head to make me to meet his eyes. “He tried something with you, Rose? Did he hurt you? Did he try and force you to—?”

I stared in surprise at the sudden intensity in Mickey’s normally calm dark eyes, but his words jerked me out of my reverie and I blinked at him. “W-what?”

Mickey’s jaw was tight and his eyes were hard. He looked pissed. “I mean, while you were out there, just the two of you, _alone_ in space, did that Doctor try and make you—”

It hit me then, what he was getting at, and I felt my eyes widen in shock. “What? _No_!” The words burst out of me so vehemently that Mickey recoiled. I worked to steady myself. “Mickey, no, he’d never hurt me like that. I swear!” Mickey didn’t look entirely convinced of this, but his grip on my arms loosened a fraction.

“Then why,” he began slowly, making an obvious effort to keep the anger out of his voice, “did you spend the last fifteen minutes soaking my t-shirt?” He leaned back against the bench, his hands falling away from my arms only to come to rest over my fingers. His palms were callused and warm, and comforting. When Mickey continued speaking he sounded frustrated. “Rose, your mum said you showed up out of the blue yesterday, lookin’ like hell and trying to hide it. And then you spent all of today holed up in your bedroom, not talking to her, not calling any of your mates—”

“You’re my only mate here,” I mumbled, and Mickey’s fingers tightened over mine.

“That’s exactly my point, Rose. You’re so caught up with that Doctor that you haven’t made time for your family, let alone had time to fine a bloke who’s idea of a good time doesn’t involve one or both of you running for your lives.”

I said nothing to this because there was nothing to say. He was right. But I couldn’t find it within me to regret any of my choices over the past few years. For all the heartache it had brought me, I wouldn’t trade travelling with the Doctor for any universe in the galaxy, including my own.

“It wasn’t him.” I said at length. “I mean, it was, but it wasn’t his fault. Not really.” Mickey was silent, waiting for me to continue. I hurried on before I could chicken out. “I told him how I felt…about him…” I couldn’t look at Mickey as I confessed that. “He said…well, he said that he cared about me…but it wasn’t the same way, I could tell…not like how I felt…” I played with a button on my shirt, finding it easier tell my story to my knees than my former boyfriend. “I tried to let it go, tried to just be mates, you know? But it was too hard…too hard not to read into the little things, the way he’d look at me, or innocently touch my arm…I couldn’t take it in the end. I…” I swallowed hard and felt Mickey’s reassuring squeeze of my hands, urging me to finish. “I gave him an ultimatum. I…” I took a deep breath and then said it all in a rush. “I told him that it hurt too much to stay with him if he didn’t—couldn’t—feel about me like I did about him…that I’d rather go home.”

I cut off there, awash in feelings, like I was standing waist deep in the ocean and waves kept sneaking up behind me and smacking me face first into the surf. I could barely breathe through the remembered pain.

“What did he say?” Mickey asked, and he sounded like he wasn’t sure he really wanted to hear the answer. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to tell it. But I did anyway.

“He kissed me.” I said simply, and felt Mickey go still beside me. “I said he tried, remember? I told him if he couldn’t return my feelings I didn’t think I could stay, and he kissed me.”

Unconsciously I raised my fingers to touch my lips, remembering the Doctor’s bruising kisses…the heat of his mouth….the taste of his tongue…—I shook my head quickly, dispelling the images.

“But he pushed me away, Mickey.” My voice hitched the tiniest bit and I swallowed hard, trying to force back the bitter memory. But in the fashion of Hell’s denizens everywhere, it shoved its way brutally to the forefront of my mind. “He held me so close…and I really thought that maybe…maybe he—but I was wrong…I disgusted him.” The words came out in a whisper that turned into in whimper, and I ducked my head in shame.

“And he dumped you back in London,” Mickey finished for me. I gave a tiny jerk of my head to simulate a nod and heard Mickey sigh heavily. He dropped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me against his side again. “You listen to me, Rose Tyler,” and his voice was suddenly commanding, enough so that I lifted my head to look at him; Mickey’s face was fierce. “Any bloke that can’t see how wonderful you are ought have his head examined. And anyway, what would life have been like with a mad alien like him anyway? He was always so cryptic and pompous, and he was always pulling idiotic stunts—getting people nearly killed!”

I knew he was just trying to make me feel better, but each of Mickey’s comments stung like a barb. Because the Doctor may have been arrogant at times, but he’d also been around for hundreds of years, he knew so much more than the rest of us, and he was mysterious for good reason—it was so much safer for the rest of the Earth not to get involved with his actions—something that I had fully ignored from the first time I’d met him. Yet, despite his faults, the Doctor was so much more. He was kind and generous and funny and thrilling….and he was mine.

At least, he _had_ been…

“Are you gonna be ok, Rose?” Mickey asked then, and paused seeming to reconsider his question. “I mean, is he gonna come back? What will you do if he does?”

I honestly didn’t know what I’d do if I ever saw the Doctor again, though considering our last encounter I didn’t think I’d be seeing him any time soon. I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

**~OOO~**

We walked back to the flat arm in arm half an hour later, and when Mickey had seen me up to our front door I gave him a tight hug that neither of us seemed to want to let go of. Finally I pulled back and gave him a smile that was two thirds genuine. “It was really good to see you today, Mick,” He smiled back and I felt an echo of the old warmth that used to flood though me when whenever I saw him. “Don’t be a stranger ok?”

“Your mum would never let me,” he promised, raising his voice a tad to make sure Jackie could hear him from the living room.

“Don’t be daft,” Mum called from down the hall. “You’d show up here even if I barred the door.”

With both grinned at that. “See you later.” I said, and then stretched up on my toes and kissed him on the cheek. Mickey’s grin widened.

“I’ll ring you tomorrow, alright? Maybe we can go to the cinema or take a walk or something?”

“Yeah, alright.” I smiled back, and closed the door as Mickey waved and then turned to head down the hallway to the stairs. I sighed, leaning against the door for a long moment, knowing that mum was just around the corner waiting to pounce. Finally I squared my shoulders and marched toward the living room with the air of a solider heading to their execution.

Mum was sitting on the couch, leaning against the armrest with her legs drawn up and a magazine open across her knees. It was obvious she’d been eavesdropping due to the fact that magazine was some tosh full of recipes and stepford-perfect women who all claimed to have “easily whipped up a 20 minute meal from scratch” all while wearing heels and cocktail dresses, and looking like they’d just left the salon. Mum was practically on a first name basis with the local take-away spots. I dropped down onto the couch by her feet and raised an eyebrow at her.

“Ok, let’s have it.”

Mum hid behind her magazine a moment longer, the top of her dyed blonde head poking out at the top. She was pretending to be absorbed in a recipe, but I caught her eye when she tried to sneak a glance at me and raised an eyebrow at her.

Mum lowered her magazine with great dignity and attempted nonchalance. “Have a nice time?”

I leaned back against the couch and hugged a throw pillow to my chest thinking through the evening. “Yeah, I did.” I said honestly, because despite my breakdown, or perhaps because of it, I did feel better. I felt a smile tug at my lips. “I really missed him, you know?”

Mum grinned. “More than me?”

 “Don’t be stupid.” I tossed my pillow at her and she batted it out of the way with her magazine. We both laughed and I leaned up against her legs, resting my head on top of her knees. “You didn’t mind it so much when I was gone, did you?” I hadn’t really meant to ask the question, but now that I had I found that I really wanted to know the answer.

Mum was silent a moment before replying. “I miss you, Rose, of course I do. But I always knew that you were safe with him lookin’ out for you. And if you really wanted to be there—it made you happy, I mean—than who was I to stand in your way?” She watched my face carefully as she said this and I worked to school my features into blankness. “You didn’t look very happy when you showed up yesterday, Rose.”

I sat back, drawing my own knees up against my chest. “I was happy with him, mum.” She said nothing, just pinned me with a patented Mum gaze that looked right through me, knowing there was something I wasn’t saying. “We had a…misunderstanding…” I hedged. I loved my mother, but telling Mickey had been hard enough, I didn’t think I could stand to make the same horrible confession twice in one day. “I think we might need a bit of a break for a while.”

Mum eyed me for a long moment then nodded. “Don’t worry, love, men always were a fickle lot; if he’s as brilliant as you’re always saying he is then he’ll come around soon enough.” She smiled softly and reached forward to squeeze my arm, then tugged me gently so that I slid sideways onto her legs again. Then she shifted so I landed beside her and tucked me against her side like she used to do when I was small, and had had a bad dream or a tough day at school, laying my head on her shoulder and drawing the battered old afghan over the pair of us. I leaned against her chest and closed my eyes, allowing myself to just be a girl with her mother, and drew comfort from the fact that Jackie Tyler had been and always would be the one constant in my life.

**~OOO~**

            The credits were rolling on the movie mum had turned on sometime later that evening and I blinked my eyes sleepily, realizing that I’d passed out somewhere in the middle of the rom-com she’d chosen. I felt glad that I’d missed most of the movie, I wasn’t sure I could stomach romance at the moment. Glancing over at mum I discovered she’d also fallen asleep, her mouth hanging wide open as she snored loudly. I snorted at the sight she made then quickly covered my mouth with my hand, lest I wake her up.

Gingerly I extracted myself from the couch cushions, discovering my right leg had fallen asleep. I had to hobble down the hall to my bedroom practically single-footed, biting my lip as pins and needles exploded down my leg. It took twice as long to cross our tiny flat to my crowded pink bedroom, but once I reached it I nearly fell into bed. The past two days had been full of warm memories and friendly faces, but seeing Mum and Mickey had only added a different kind of pain to the hurt I was still struggling with.

I changed into sweats and a tank top and yanked back my duvet, eager to slide between the cool sheets and drop into the oblivion of sleep. Once under the covers, exhaustion took over and I was out within minutes.

**~OOO~**

            The next morning I woke up feeling rested, which was a refreshing change from the last few days. I spent a long stretch in the shower, letting the too-hot water massage the tension from my muscles. When the water began to run cold I finally stepped out and wrapped myself in my fluffy robe, blow-drying my hair and then brushing it until it fell in sleek waves around my shoulders. I dressed in jeans and a pink tank top and was pawing through the mess at the bottom of my closet in search of a pair of strappy sandals I’d last worn at the beginning of summer, when my mobile buzzed on the bedside table. I grabbed it up and saw Mickey’s name on the call display. I answered the call with a smile in my voice.

            “Good morning!” I sang, the rush of joy at the familiarity in this simple action was almost overwhelming.

            “Hiya,” Mickey responded, sounding pleased at my greeting. “I’m just down the street from your flat. Queue at the coffee shop is a mile long. Want anything?”

            I dropped onto the mess of blankets that was my bed and considered what kind of coffee I wanted. “Oh! Gotcha!” I crowed, suddenly spying the elusive sandals poking out from under a jumper on the floor by my dresser.

            “What’s that?” Mickey asked, sounding distracted. I could hear a tangle of voices from other customers in the background.

            “Nothing, nothing…” I chirped, “Just found my shoes. I’ll take something sweet. Mocha-frappa-caramel something-or-other.”

            Mickey laughed. “I don’t think that’s a real drink.”

            “Whatever. Just be here as soon as you can and be bearing caffeine.”

            “Rodger Wilko.” Mickey replied, “Should be there in fifteen or so.”

            “Mmmhmmm…” I murmured, distracted. I’d pinned my mobile between my ear and my shoulder and grabbed hold of my pink duvet to start making my bed. I’d just given the blanket a firm shake into the air, attempting to get it to settle evenly over the mattress, and nearly missed the flutter of a small piece of yellow paper, flipped into the air at the movement of the duvet and currently floating gently back to Earth like an oversized month.

Letting the blanket fall crookedly onto the bed, I dropped to my knees on the carpet to squint at the paper, the sound of Mickey telling off some sod who’d tried to cut the queue in front of him faded into white noise in the background. There was some sort of scribbling on the paper. I bent closer and blinked hard, gaze focusing on what was written there.

Or, more appropriately, what was drawn there.

I snatched the yellow paper off the carpet and sat back, suddenly shaking violently. The paper held a large circular image interspersed with lines and curves and small circles, a swirly pattern that, though I couldn’t technically “read” it, I understood as plainly as if it had been written in English: My name.

Mickey forgotten, I stared at the paper. This note had been written in Circular Gallifreyan, and that meant that sometime this morning, sometime within the last half hour, the Doctor had been in my room.

           

            I sat on the carpet for a long minute, feeling my heart thrum in my chest like a frantic bird. I felt dizzy and sick and desperate and elated…and then wondered how any one person could feel all those emotions at the same time and not explode. Why had he been here? What did his note mean? I looked down at it again and realized that the paper was folded in half: the symbol for my name was written on the top, but when I flipped the note open I realized that there were words printed in English on the inside. The letter was short:

            “Rose Tyler,

I realize that our last encounter was not my finest hour, and of course I will not hold it against you for wanting to go on living your life without me. I’m so sorry for the way I treated you. I have no words to express my deep regret. Perhaps one day you can forgive me. –The Doctor”.

            It was his farewell note. I stared down at the paper, unseeing, for a long moment, my mind reeling. He wasn’t…going to…come back.

Not ever.

He hadn’t even been able to bear telling me goodbye in person.

My own breathing sounded loud in my ears and the paper fell from my hand, fluttering gently to the ground. My mobile slipped from my shoulder a second later, bouncing onto the carpet. I was vaguely aware of the sound of Mickey asking what that sudden thump was but couldn’t move to pick up the phone, my body felt frozen with shock.

            Then, with no warning beyond the abrupt buzzing in my ears, the world tilted violently, blackness rushing in at all sides like I’d plunged into a lake of dark water…and then the world dropped away.

**~OOO~**

            “………..Rose…”

The voice sounded very far away, strangely echoing as if it were coming from down a well or at the end of a long tunnel.

“Rose?”

I pushed against the darkness, feeling suffocated, struggling to find my way to the owner of that sound. I could feel hands on me, gently patting my face and shaking my shoulder.

“Come on sweetheart, wake up. Rose?”

My mouth felt dry, like it was full of cotton. I moaned, my head still reeling, and struggled to open my eyes. The hands on me became restraining, pressing me down against the carpet when I made an attempt to sit up.

“Rose? Are you ok?” That was Mickey’s voice. Mickey? What was he doing in my bedroom? Then the aroma of dark roast coffee wafted past my nose and I remembered the phone conversation we’d been having.

“Mickey?” I mumbled, finally prying my eyes open and discovering his anxious face inches from my own.

“Are you ok? Did you hit your head? Rose, what happened? We were chatting and then I heard a thump, and static, and you wouldn’t answer!” Mickey gently helped me into a sitting position, his expression uneasy.

“My head’s fine.” I said in response to his torrent of questions. I supposed I was lucky that I’d already been kneeling on the carpet when I’d fainted, my room was crowded and there had been every chance that I might have brained myself on a sharp corner of a bookshelf or the edge of my iron bedframe when I’d fallen over.

Mickey was staring hard at my eyes. “Are you sure you don’t have a concussion? Do you have a headache? Can you see ok?”

I still felt dizzy but it wasn’t from passing out. “No headache, promise.” I tried to smile reassuringly but my lips refused to form the shape.

Mickey was hovering by my side like mother hen, his mobile in his hand now. “Do you want me to call your mum?” he asked, sliding an arm around my waist when I pushed myself to my knees, struggling to stand up. He helped me back up to the bed and then sit down on it.

“Call mum?” I parroted, glancing over at him in confusion. “Isn’t she here?”

“No,” he answered, eying me as if he thought the concussion more and more likely. “She’s out, remember? Note’s on the kitchen table. I let myself in with the key Jackie gave me for when we do tea. She’s down the high street doing errands right now.”

“Oh.” The word sounded hollow in my mouth. So that’s how he’d snuck in. Mum had gone out shopping before I’d woken up and then I’d been in the shower; all he’d had to do was wait and then slip in while no one was looking.

“Rose,” Mickey prompted again, and I flickered my eyes his way. “You really scared me just now. You have no idea how freaked out I was when I got to your flat and found you passed out on the floor! What the bloody hell happened?!”

My eyes moved to the unobtrusive yellow paper laying innocently in the middle of the room, next to the sandals that had seemed so important a few minutes ago. Mickey followed my gaze and his eyes narrowed when he spotted the note. The bed creaked as he moved forward to stoop down and pick it up. I watched him silently as he scanned the drawing on the front and then flipped it open and skimmed the inner contents. When he was finished he turned to look at me, understanding dawning on his face.

“Oh.” He echoed my earlier statement, looking like someone does when you tell them a family member of yours has died, and they want to say something comforting but are afraid they might mess up and say something that sounds trivial, so instead they say nothing at all, just look at you with that mixture of horror and regret and a tiny bit of relief that it wasn’t themselves in your position.

“Yeah.” I replied, still feeling numb to the whole event.

We sat together in silence for another minute, both staring off into the middle distance, thinking our respective thoughts, though when I chanced a glance at Mickey’s face out of the corner of my eye his thoughts appeared to be a tad more violent than mine were.

“Right, we’re getting out of here.” Mickey announced, grabbing my hand and pulling me up off the bed. I allowed him to lead me out of my bedroom and into the hall without protest, realizing he’d scooped up my sandals as we’d left the room. I tugged my shoes on when Mickey paused to open the door to the flat and then preceded him into the hall, allowing him to lock up behind us.

“Where are we going?” I asked once we’d reached the main floor and come out into the empty lot behind my building.

Mickey draped an arm around my waist, pulling me into his side. “A walk; just getting’ some fresh air and sunshine into you.”

I hmmed at his attempt at casualness, but couldn’t manage much more than that. So walk we did, although that mostly equated to Mickey guiding me down streets and out of the paths of trees and people. A flash of blue out of the corner of my eye brought me up short, and I gasped, struggling to get out of from under Mickey’s arm. I lurched toward the blue police box, my heart racing—

—and a bobby in a black and white uniform and bright yellow jacket stepped out, an elderly woman close behind him. I stumbled to a halt and felt Mickey step up beside me.

“Rose…” he started, voice quiet, but concern for my sanity evident in the way he said my name. I stepped away from him.

“I—I thought…I thought that…but of course it wasn’t.” I hugged my arms around myself. The day was warm but the sun had gone behind a cloud and goosebumps had risen on my arms from the sudden rush of adrenaline.

“Maybe going for a walk wasn’t such a good idea,” Mickey began. I shook him off.

“No, I needed to get out of that room. Thanks Mickey.” I offered him a small smile that was more of a grimace. “But I think I want to be on my own for a bit, alright? I’ll ring you later.”

Mickey frowned at me, probably wondering if it was safe to leave me on my own in my current emotional state. I didn’t give him time to reconsider, turning away and starting to walk down the street….in the opposite direction from the police box.

“Rose…” he called after I’d gone a few feet.

“Later!” I shouted back, not turning, and he didn’t follow.

**~OOO~**

            I wondered London for hours, not stopping to rest until the throbbing of my feet in my thin sandals finally became painful enough to penetrate the thick fog wrapped about my brain. I found myself in Hyde Park, miles from home but too tired to care. I dropped to the ground under a tree in a deserted part of the park, leaning against the trunk and staring up at the sky, remembering all the adventures I’d had ‘out there’ and wondering if I’d truly never have any more.

            I didn’t move from my tree for a long time, barely noticing the passage of time until my empty stomach growled and I glanced down at my belly, realizing that I hadn’t eaten breakfast this morning and I’d abandoned Mickey before we could stop for a snack anywhere. I was surprised to realize that dusk was falling now…I hadn’t realized how many hours had passed during my zombie walk around town…and the temperature was beginning to drop. I decided to head for the tube and make a stop on the way home for take-away. Maybe I’d call Mickey and ask him if he wanted to come eat with me; I really should have rung him hours ago. He was probably worried sick.

            I patted down my jeans pockets, searching for my mobile, and came up empty-handed, every pocket flat and devoid of contents. I realized then that my mobile was probably still on the floor in the middle of my bedroom where I’d dropped it this morning, and my wallet was in my purse, which was on the coffee table in the living room. I was officially broke and stranded, and despite the oncoming darkness, I couldn’t bring myself to care.

            “Come on feet,” I muttered, turning to begin the long trek back across the park. “It’s only five hundred miles to our door; let’s try not to become the Proclaimers poster-child.”

            I was nearly across the bridge over the Serpentine when I spotted a flash of blue in the shadows. I slowed, not stopping entirely, and narrowed my eyes, looking again. I thought I might be able to make out something blue beyond the trees, though I wasn’t sure. I’d come to a complete stop now, the setting sun at my back stretching my shadow out ahead of me as I crept forward.

            I shouldn’t look, I told myself. I’d gotten my hopes up once today and look what that had done to my already broken heart. But I couldn’t help myself. I started to run, my sandals slapping against the stones of the bridge, my eyes locked on the spot in the trees where I was sure I’d seen a flash of blue. I barreled through the forested area and burst out into a clearing—

            —and there it was: a blue police box, sitting off to one side, tucked into a copse of trees.

            I skidded to a halt in front of it, breathing hard, knowing that if this turned out to be a dead end too I would completely shut down. Heart beating frantically in my chest, I slowly approached the doors and stretched out a shaking hand to try the handle. It was locked.

            I stared at the door and rattled the handle again. It was _locked_. It took a moment for the meaning to sink in. Police box doors were never locked; they were always open to the public. Only one blue police box in the universe would ever refuse to open under a human hand…

            There was a sound behind me, a shoe sliding over loose pebbles on the path. I froze, my fingers still locked tightly around the police box door handle. I suddenly couldn’t breathe.

            “What are you doing here, Rose Tyler?”

The voice was careful, neutral, and completely familiar. I turned slowly around, my entire body trembling so hard I was sure it was visible even in the growing darkness, and there he was, not ten feet away from me.

The Doctor stood next to the Serpentine, wearing a brown pinstripe suit, the jacket open over a blue denim button down shirt, layered over a gray t-shirt, red Converse trainers on his feet. His hands were deep in his trouser pockets and his brown overcoat flapped in the wind.

He was really here; so close I could almost touch him. We stared at each other for a long moment, neither of us speaking, my mind reeling. Why was he here? Wasn’t he supposed to be gone and never coming back?

“Doctor?” I whispered, and blinked hard, terrified that if tears blurred my vision the man in front of me would vanish into the ether like smoke. Disbelief and terror warred in that single word, and hope….hope blazed up around me like a tempest. When he didn’t say anything, just kept staring at me from across the clearing, I took a step toward him…and swayed.

His neutral expression cracked when I stumbled, and I could tell that he thought I was about to faint. I wasn’t sure he was wrong either. But when he took a step toward me, hands rising to catch at me, I lurched away from him, bumping up against the police box door. The faintest concerned vibe floated through the air from the TARDIS but I was too completely thrown to reassure her.

The Doctor froze, palms up, fingers outstretched, looking as if I’d hit him. His face closed down and he slowly lowered his arms to his sides, taking a step back from where I was pressed up against the TARDIS.

“Rose,” he said carefully, holding himself perfectly still. “It’s dangerous to be out this late at night, why are you here?”

I pressed my palms against the wood of the TARDIS’ door, the solid box reassuring me that I hadn’t had a mental breakdown in the middle of Hyde Park. The Doctor was really standing across from me, the TARDIS was really at my back, and I really had no idea what to say to either of them.

**~OOO~**

            **Everybody together now: Enough angst already!!! *cackles evilly***


	8. Chapter 8

**Ok ok! I know that there was a TON of angst in the last chapter and far too LITTLE Doctor…but trust me when I say that I’ll make up for it in this chapter. *tips hat***

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 8 -

 “What am I doing here?” I repeated, my voice sounding far away in my own ears. I eyed the Doctor standing across the clearing. I still couldn’t believe that he was there, so close to me… as if the note this morning hadn’t happened.

I took a step away from the TARDIS, my breathing shallow, and the ground shifted unsteadily beneath my feet. I took another step and then stopped, unsure if I was about to have a repeat of this morning and faint in the middle of the park. For another forever-moment we both just stared at each other, and then I was moving toward him, suddenly desperate to touch him, to prove that he was really here and not an apparition brought on by the longing of my broken heart.

“What do you mean, what am _I_ doing here?” I was only a few steps away from him now. “What are _you_ doing here? Shouldn’t you be long gone by now, London a mistake forgotten in your distant past?”

The Doctor looked uncomfortable as I advanced on him, pulling his hands out of his pockets as if he might hold me back. I crossed the final distance between us, stopping right in front of him, and glared up into his troubled face.

“Rose…” he began, but I didn’t let him finish.

“Shut up!” He flinched back at the anger in my voice. “All anyone has been saying to me the last few days is Rose, Rose, Rose….as if I’m liable to forget my own name! As if I don’t have anything to say. Well I do!”

The Doctor had frozen in place; arms outstretched as if he’d intended to embrace me—or push me away—then changed his mind in the middle of the action. “Rose Tyler, please—” he began.

_CRACK!!_

The Doctor’s head snapped to the side under the force of my slap, a glowing red handprint glaring against the pale skin of his cheek. The nearly-set sun reflected in his shocked eyes. My palm stung but I didn’t care.

“You left without saying goodbye!” I shouted, and my voice broke on the last word; the tears I’d been fighting back broke free and slid down my cheeks in a hot flood. “You just dumped me in London, then not a word for days—though maybe it’s been years for you, how should I know, right?—and when I finally do hear from you, it’s a note secreted into my bedroom when no one is around!”

The Doctor said nothing to this, his tall, lean body bending back against the torrent of my outburst as if he were a sapling in the wind. I stared up at him, humiliation and desperation in my eyes, and fought the urge to shake him and command him to speak. Why was he just looking at me that way?!

“Did I disgust you that much?” I whispered, my voice abruptly dull and emotionless, and then my legs gave out and I dropped to the ground like a marionette with cut strings. I hit the earth hard on my hands and knees and ducked my head, overcome with the entirety of it all: emotion, exhaustion, heartache, shock. I felt rung out and limp and at the end of my strength. I couldn’t even cry any more.

Somewhere in front of me I was aware of gravel shifting under shoes, and then a pair of familiar pinstriped knees were in front of mine. I saw the Doctor’s hands flutter in the air out of the corner of my eyes, but didn’t lift my head. I felt like a lead weight. I heard him take a deep breath, and then his hands settled on my upper arms, gently pulling me into a sitting position. With a herculean effort I lifted my eyes to his face.

The Doctor was staring down at me, eyebrows knit together and disbelief in his clear brown eyes. “You thought I pulled away because I didn’t want you?” he asked, and I bit hard on my trembling lower lip, dropping my gaze. A warm hand on my cheek gently raised my head again. “Rose,” he said quietly, “it took everything in me to force myself back in that moment in the TARDIS. I could tell that I’d frightened you—” He saw the look in my eyes then and frowned. “Don’t try to deny it, Rose Tyler; part of a Time Lord’s abilities are being a ‘tiny bit psychic’, remember? Not to mention your physical reaction at the time.” he added.

“You surprised me, is all…” I mumbled, and he stroked his thumb down my cheek, looking troubled.

“That’s exactly the point, Rose. I lost control, gave in to my base impulses, and I scared you.” He took a shaky breath and his voice dropped to just above a whisper, his next words full of self-loathing. “I could tell that I’d frightened you…and _I didn’t care_.” The words were weighted with meaning. “Rassilon help me, I didn’t care.” He muttered these last three words so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him. He lowered his head until his forehead rested against mine, his eyes closing. “I wanted you so much…”

I could barely breathe, still trying to process his words. “But you brought me home,” I finally whispered. “You told me you’d made a mistake.” The wind blew hard through the trees at that moment, rustling the surrounding branches loudly and sending a tremor through my half-clothed body. I hadn’t planned to be out this late without a jacket.

The Doctor pulled back from me again, his hand on my arm twitching as goose bumps rose along my flesh. “Perhaps we could continue this conversation indoors?” he offered, pushing himself to his feet and gently drawing me up with him.

I allowed the Doctor to guide me into the TARDIS, blinking in the warmly lit interior. It felt like years since I’d last been inside this ship, not just a few days. The Doctor closed the doors behind us and then came to stand next to me. I could feel the hesitation in the way he carried himself, afraid to touch me, unsure what to say.

After a pregnant pause, he started moving across the room and I followed. We walked through the console room and down one of the branching hallways, the Doctor guiding me with the barest touch on my back whenever we reached a corner, until a door opened before us. I followed him through it and saw that we were in a small sitting room. There was a fireplace set into the far wall, flanked by a pair of dark blue, high-backed wing armchairs and faced by a matching loveseat; it was to this last piece of furniture that the Doctor led me and we both perched gingerly on the soft cushions. I knit my fingers together in my lap and watched the leaping flames beyond the grate.

“Why did you come back?” I asked after an age, my question barely loud enough to be heard above the crackling fire. The Doctor shifted beside me and I glanced at him under my lashes. He looked very serious. “How long were you gone for?” I amended, and then felt my heart skip a beat. I suddenly wasn’t sure if I could stand to hear the answer.

The Doctor swallowed, his hands palms-down on his knees, and then turned to face me. “An hour.”

I lifted my head in shock, my mouth dropping open. “What?”

His forehead creased and his fingers curled into tight fists on his lap, knuckles turning white. It was his turn to divine answers from the fire. “From the time I left you in the park I was only gone an hour. Literally only one Earth hour; no cheating and sneaking back earlier in your time line. I meant to leave, mind you; I did try. But the TARDIS, well, she can be stubborn when she sets her mind to something. I came back to the exact spot where I’d left you, but you’d already gone home.” he continued, and I realized that though it had felt like eons that I’d huddled on that spot, trying to breathe around the hole in my heart, it had only been less than an sixty minutes. The Doctor went on, looking both immensely relieved and increasingly more wretched as he continued his confession. “I hated myself for having abandoned you back in London, leaving you in the street just like that Magpie bloke did when he stole your face. Only I’d done worse than him by far. Because I took your innocence, your trust in me; and when I realized the danger of giving in to my wants, I threw you out of the TARDIS as if that were your fault.”

“Doctor,” I said softly, wanting to comfort him but having no words. I was still a complete emotional mess inside, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt me to see him in such turmoil himself.

“Rose,” the Doctor said then, twisting his body so that he faced me and covering my clasped hands with his own. “I didn’t want to do that to you again.” The look in his eyes was so earnest, begging me to understand without words. “I thought that it would be better if I left you with your friends and family; I saw you with Mickey by the fountain—”

I jerked out of his grasp, pressing back against the armrest of the small couch. “You were spying on me?”

He looked startled. “No!” I leveled a look at him and his expression turned rueful. “Not like that, anyway.” He rose to his feet then and went to stand next to the fireplace, gripping the mantle with both hands as if he needed the support. My eyes moved to the back of his head, watching the way the firelight glinted on his silky brown hair, still artfully messy as always. As if he could feel me watching him, the Doctor turned back to face me. “I never left London,” he said without pretense. “When I came back two days ago I couldn’t bear to leave again until I knew that you were ok, readjusting to your life on Earth. So I’ve been hopping the TARDIS around the city, popping by places that I thought you might be, and one of the places I went by was the chips shop where you and I had supper that one time. I saw you and Mickey walking, hand in hand…”

My mouth popped open again, a tiny ‘oh’ of understanding on my lips. The Doctor went on feverishly, as if now that he’d started talking he couldn’t stop until the entire story was out.

“Watching you two together I knew that he would take care of you. He was always a better match for you than I was; far kinder, more grounded…”

I wanted to contradict him, but he was right in a way. Mickey was the safer choice. He’d been a great boyfriend when we’d been dating; he was sweet, and funny, and charming. But he wasn’t the Doctor. The words to say as much were on my lips, but the Doctor was still going.

“I didn’t stay, Rose; I wouldn’t disrespect you like that, eavesdropping on your private life.” I could see in his eyes that he was telling the truth. It was obvious to me that he hadn’t stayed now, because if he had he would have seen my breakdown. “Once I’d seen that you were in good hands, I left you alone to your chosen path, and decided that a clean break would be best for both of us. As I said, it wasn’t your fault what happened in the TARDIS—”

I broke in then, unable to stop myself. “Not my fault?” I said incredulously, pushing up off the loveseat to stand in front of him. “Doctor, who was the person who couldn’t control her raging human hormones? Who pushed you and pushed you, until you could hardly be in the same room with me for fear that I’d misread your platonic intentions? Who hit you over the head with an unfair ultimatum, forcing you into a situation that you were obviously trying to avoid—”

“Rose,” the Doctor cut in. “It was never that I didn’t want to return your feelings. I’ve cared strongly about you for some time now…” He choked off his sentence, his normally pale face faintly pink, and rubbed at the back of his head in agitation, looking somewhere over my shoulder. “It was only that I couldn’t do that to you, let you bind yourself to me when our lives would end up passing like ships in the night. As much as I’ve treasured travelling with you, cherished your companionship over the years, I wanted you to have a chance at a normal life.”

“But Doctor,” I started, taking a step closer to him. His expression tightened again, and I could see his body tense, as if to step back.

“I fought so hard to resist you, Rose Tyler,” he said quietly, firelight mirrored in his eyes as he watched me close the distance between us. “And that afternoon I got tired of fighting.”

I was only inches from him now. “Then why the note in my room?” I whispered the question, as if voicing it would upset the delicate balance in the room. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a knife, only just barely balancing, and the slightest breath of air able to topple me off.

“Clean break, as I said.” I moved closer to him, arms still hanging at my sides, allowing him to be the one to initiate contact. “I thought that it would be easier if you didn’t have to see me. I came to this park after I left your flat to try and gather my thoughts; decide what to do, where to go next. I’ve always liked Hyde Park; though Queen Caroline digging into the public purse for twenty thousand pounds to landscape it never sat well with me.” He frowned a little and the tiniest of smiles flickered on my lips; always with the history, even in the middle of drama. The Doctor’s eyes narrowed in on my face. “The last person I expected to see here tonight was _you_ , Rose.”

I could tell he was waiting for an explanation but I wasn’t sure what to say. Because really, what was there _to_ say? We were so close now…I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to…and oh, how I wanted to…

My fingers twitched at my sides but I curled them in on each other and forced my hands to remain stationary. “It wasn’t a clean break,” I mumbled, taking a step back and feeling my shins bump up against the loveseat. I met his eyes as I spoke and could see the pain mirrored in them. “Doctor, reading that letter…it…it broke my heart.” My voice hitched on those last words and I could see his face tighten, guilt flashing in eyes.

“Rose, I’m so, so sorry for putting you through that. I thought it was the only way things could ever be made right again—”

“—Doctor, two people were involved in that _indiscretion_ , and two people should have made the decision over what to do about it. You just decided I’d be better off without you, without even asking me!” My voice was steady as I spoke, but that didn’t mean the words I was saying came out any easier. “You once asked me if I had ‘such little faith in you as that’, can’t I ask you the same? Do you really think that I’d be so much better off without you in my life? You’ve shown me so much. I’ve grown more in the few years I’ve travelled with you than I think I ever could have working in that little shop in London. And despite the heartache I may have caused myself over our relationship, don’t you think you at least owed me an explanation before _running away_?”

I could see him flinch ever so slightly when I said “running away”, but it was too late to take back the words now, even if they were true. I held the Doctor’s gaze and waited for him to speak.

He was silent for a long time, and I began to wonder if I should leave the TARDIS. He hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with his intent since we’d run into each other in the park—yes, he’d admitted a certain amount of desire for me, but then he’d spent the past fifteen minutes going on about how it would be best for me if I cut all ties with him. My mind rejected the possibility of dealing with _assuming_ I could stay and then finding out that the Doctor had decided to leave again after all, so in the end I did my best to focus on the conversation at hand and nothing further.

Finally the Doctor pulled himself together. He straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath, as if preparing for an important speech. “That note may not have been the best way to address things, you’re right. It’s rather that I haven’t…” he cleared his throat and swallowed hard, adjusting his tie unnecessarily, “…that this sort of situation…it’s all rather new to me, and I didn’t know quite how to react to it.” He paused, eyes on my face, as if gaging my reaction to his words, then pressed on. “I was trying to think of the least intrusive way to take myself out of your life. I…well, these past few weeks I know that I kept mucking up our time together, and I kept hurting you, over and over…and seeing you unhappy was killing me.” The pain in his voice was almost palpable. “But even while I was pushing you away I never truly wanted it.”

Without knowing why, my heart started to beat a little faster. The Doctor pinned me with a suddenly decisive look.

“I know I have no right to ask it of you, Rose Tyler; but if you can find it in your heart to forgive me for the abhorring way I treated you… would you… could you possibly consider… coming back?”

In my chest my heart gave a sudden joyful lurch. He still wanted me here! I wanted to sing with happiness! But at the same time, could I really handle staying here with the Doctor knowing that even though he desired me on some level, he still thought a relationship between us was unfair to me?

The indecision must have shown on my face because he hurried on. “I swear by Rassilon, Rose Tyler, that I will do everything in my power to make you feel safe and at home again while you travel with me. If you need it, I could also pop round Mickey’s house and take him with us…” He looked a little grim as he made the offer, and I knew that he didn’t really want Mickey back aboard the TARDIS, that he’d made the suggestion because of the comfort and security his presence would lend to me. In that moment I was willing to bet I could have asked him to take my mother along and he’d have agreed to it.

I closed the distance between us then, finally allowing myself to reach out and touch him. I slid my hands up over his chest, barely touching, gliding my fingertips over his shirt and jacket, just trying to reassure myself that he was real and I was really back in the TARDIS again. The Doctor held himself perfectly still as I moved, hands firmly at his sides, but again, there was the barest increase in his breathing. I wet my lips and took a deep breath, finally looking at him.

“You’re really here, aren’t you?” The question came out quietly, and the vulnerability in my voice was plain.

The Doctor regarded me solemnly. “I’m really here.”

“You won’t go away again?”

“Not until you tell me to go, Rose Tyler.”

I nodded slowly, palms splayed on his chest, resting over his hearts; their rhythm soothed me. The Doctor watched me with warm brown eyes unblinking, allowing me to come to my own decision. I could see the anxiousness in his expression though, showcased in the tightness of his face, the crease between his brows, and gave him my answer.

“I’ll always feel safe with you, Doctor. And like I’ve tried over and over to convince you, the only place I want to be is by your side.” He said nothing, apparently waiting until he was sure I was finished speaking. I felt the first genuine smile in what felt like years break across my face then, and turned the full force of its brilliance on him. “Of course I’ll come back!”

I stretched up on my toes and threw my arms around the Doctor’s neck, pulling him down toward me. He gave a small grunt of surprise at my sudden lunge, but a grin split his own face as his arms came up and clasped my waist tightly, pulling me against his body and hugging me hard. I buried my face in his shoulder, feeling as if the weight of the world had just rolled off my shoulders. I felt light as a feather and awash in joy. I was so thankful to be back in the TARDIS and in his arms.

The Doctor held me close for a long moment, neither one of us wanting to be the first to pull away, but eventually he loosened his grip on me and held me a little ways back so that he could see my face. I frowned at him.

“What’s wrong?”

He frowned back at me. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong! I’d say everything finally became right again!” A tiny smile pulled up the left corner of his mouth.

I gave his chest a light smack. “You have that look on your face.”

The look the Doctor gave me then was so comical, so truly _him_ , that I giggled, feeling giddy despite the niggling sense of unease in the back of my mind.

“What look?” he demanded, sounding both confused and a little offended.

I met him raised eyebrow for raised eyebrow. “You’re worrying about something.” I challenged him, and held his eyes, knowing that he’d crack before I did. He made a face.

“I was just thinking that now you’ve decided to stay with me again, what will we tell your mother?”

He looked so utterly terrified of facing Jackie Tyler that I did laugh, and not just a little. “Doctor!” I giggled, stepping out of his arms to regard him with amusement. “You’ve been alive for over 900 years, fought aliens from dozens of planets, lived through wars and the rise and fall of empires, seen the end of the world…and yet you’re still afraid of my mum?”

The Doctor looked put out. “She already doesn’t like me,” he muttered. “And I can only imagine what you told her during your visit just now. If I go anywhere near her I’ve no doubt she’ll more than slap me this time!”

I sobered. “I didn’t tell her.” The Doctor pinned me with a look and I amended my statement. “Well, I told her we’d had a row and were taking a break…she actually stood up for you, believe it or not.”

“Your mum took my side over her daughter’s in an argument?” the Doctor asked, looking skeptical.

“She said that if you were as decent as I always made you out to be that you’d get over whatever it was that we were fightin’ over.” I said softly, dropping down to sit on the loveseat again. After a moment the Doctor sat down beside me. I reached over and laced my fingers in his, looking down at our entwined hands as I spoke.

“Listen Doctor, I’ll stay, but I want you to know that I won’t push, alright? We both know that a relationship between us on that…level…” I felt a blush rise on my cheeks and kept my head down, “…well, it would be difficult.”

“Rose…” the Doctor began, and I went on quickly.

“Let’s just get though rescuing your friend or cousin or whoever, yeah? Then after…not that I’m assuming anything, ‘cause I’m not, alright? …but afterwards, maybe we could talk…?”

I saw the Doctor lift his free hand from his lap and reach toward me. He gently cupped the side of my face, lifting my chin. When I was looking him in the eyes again he smiled softly.

“There’s no rush, Rose, no pressure. Time Lord, remember? We’ve got all the time in the universe to figure this—whatever this is—out.”

My answering smile was a tad tremulous but still real. He was right; we’d work through this. A yawn suddenly wracked my face and I clapped a hand to my mouth, startled, my blush deepening. The Doctor dropped his hand from my cheek and stood with a tender look on his face, pulling me up with him.

“And that, Miss Tyler, would be my cue to send you to bed.” He grinned at me as I rubbed at my eyes. I’d been so caught up in our reunion that I hadn’t had time for my body to remember how exhausted it was from walking around London all day, not to mention the emotional strain of the twenty-four hours.

I fought back a second yawn and then gave in. “Alright, sleep it is. But don’t think we’re finished talking about my mum, because I have to see her before I leave this time; I don’t want a repeat of our first trip together when you messed up the dates and she thought Mickey had murdered me or something!” I tried to glare at him but my face felt like wax, too tired to form proper expressions.

The Doctor cringed but nodded, still looking like he’d rather face down the Gelth again instead of going to my flat.

I left the little sitting room then and made my way down the winding hallways to my bedroom. The TARDIS gave my mind an affectionate nudge, like a puppy happy to see her mistress again, and I sent a smile to the ceiling. “I missed you, too.” I murmured, turning into my room.

It looked the same as always, bed with its blue blankets, furniture where I’d arranged it… but it felt slightly foreign, like a bedroom that you’ve been away from all summer and come back to expecting it to feel the same and it seems smaller somehow. But at the same time it did feel like coming home. I kicked off my shoes and pulled flannel pajama bottoms and a t-shirt out of a drawer, heading into the bathroom to take a hot shower. Things would look brighter in the morning, I told myself, the main point was that the Doctor and I were working through our feelings for each other. I turned the taps in the shower and adjusted the temperature before stepping under the streaming water. He’d finally admitted he had feelings for me, even if he was still fighting them, and for now that would have to be enough.

**~OOO~**

            In the morning I woke early, jerking into consciousness with a gasp before realizing that I was still in the TARDIS and that yesterday hadn’t been a horrible dream. I dressed in the same clothes as yesterday and brushed out my hair, taking slightly longer on it than usual. When I was certain that there wasn’t a tangle left in a single blonde lock I touched up my make-up and headed out to find the Doctor.

            He was in the kitchen, and met me in the doorway holding a plate of waffles and a mug of tea. He appeared to have been just about to head into the hallway when I arrived, and stepped back to let me into the room.

            “Good morning,” I said, smiling at him as I went over to sit at the table. He turned around and sat down opposite me, placing the plate and mug from his hands across from me. At my curious look he turned slightly red and fiddled with one of the sleeves on his blue jacket.

            “I was bringing that to your room. I wasn’t sure if…after yesterday…you’d want to eat here…” _With me._ The last words hung in the air unspoken, but I could see in his eyes that he still felt awkward around me.

            I pulled the plate toward me and sniffed deeply, inhaling the sweet smell of syrup and toaster waffles. Not a typical breakfast for me but it looked good either way. I smiled at the Doctor, trying to dispel the uncomfortable feeling in the room. Just relax and be yourself, I wanted to say. Please, don’t make our reconsolidation into the elephant in the room. I picked up my fork and started to eat.

            “So after breakfast…” the Doctor began, and I lifted my head from my plate to pin him with a look. He had looked hopeful as he started to speak, but when he caught my eye his face fell.

            “After breakfast we’re going to see my mum.” I said firmly. “We’re still in London, right?”

The Doctor nodded, playing with his own mug of tea and pouting slightly. “Yes, we’re still in London. Still in Hyde Park, actually.”

I ate another bite of waffle and sipped my tea. “Good. So we’ll stop by my flat and let mum know we’re going off again.” I paused, then pushed on. “And I’d better talk to Mickey too. He was…well, the words righteous anger come to mind…”

I glanced up at the Doctor through my lashes and found him watching me. “You told him.” Then, before I could say anything, he went on. “Of course you did. And you had every right to, after way I treated you. I take it he wasn’t very happy with me.”

I regarded the Doctor over the top of my mug, half-hiding behind it. “He may have been slightly less than pleased.”

The Doctor sighed heavily. “I’ve certainly made a right mess of things, haven’t I?” He scrubbed at the back of his head with his free hand and avoided my eyes.

“Doctor…”

“Best get the TARDIS ready for business then,” the Doctor said, pushing his chair back from the table and standing. He had the air of someone facing a firing squad as he turned and left the tiny kitchen, and I did not envy him dealing with either Mum or Mickey.

**~OOO~**

In the end we didn’t have to make two trips, Mickey was waiting in the living room in the flat when the Doctor and I arrived, Mum sitting next to him on the couch and two cups of cold tea before them on the coffee table.

“Um, hey…” I said, stepping into the room with a little wave. They both looked up, and Mickey leaped to his feet, moving across the room almost at a run to pull me into his arms. When he spotted the Doctor standing behind me in the hall he swiveled, pushing me behind him and glaring at the lean man in the suit.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded coldly. “Haven’t you caused Rose enough trouble?”

The Doctor took a step back from the forcefulness in Mickey’s voice and I pushed myself between them.

“Mickey, stop it. It’s ok, alright?” The look Mickey gave me at these words was part shock and part betrayal, and I felt horrid for causing those feelings in him. “I ran into him in the park last night and we talked. We’re…we’re gonna work through things…” I cast a glance at Mum, who hadn’t yet moved from her place on the couch and then turned back to Mickey. “What are you doing here anyway? I told you I’d ring you later.”

Mickey’s expression was stony. “I, foolishly it seems, assumed that ‘ring you later’ meant later last night. And though _you_ may have forgotten that the last time you didn’t call we didn’t see you for a year and I nearly got arrested, but I haven’t. I called Jackie when midnight came and I hadn’t heard from you. I didn’t want to go through that again.”

My heart gave a little lurch and I felt more than heard the Doctor move to stand next to me. Mickey noticed it too, and directed his anger at him instead.

“Do you have any idea what you put her through?” he demanded, and I saw the Doctor flinch out of the corner of my eye.

“I do,” he replied quietly.

Mickey advanced on him. “You should have seen her yesterday,” he went on, pushing past me so that he was right in the Doctor’s face, despite being several inches shorter than him. “Rose has always been the strongest person I’ve known, and when she came to me yesterday and told me what you did…” He paused, letting the words hang in the air for a moment for full affect, then continued in a low voice that sent chills up my spine. “You broke her, Doctor.”

I glanced up at him then, and saw the wretchedness in his eyes, even as he held Mickey’s gaze. “I know,” was all he said. “And I will spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to her.”

“Make it up…?” Mickey repeated, looking incredulous. And then there was a blur of motion and a wicked sounding crunch—and the Doctor grunted and crashed to the floor. I screamed.

“What did you do that for?” I cried, shoving Mickey backwards and planting myself in front of the Doctor as he rubbed his jaw on the ground. “Mum?!” I demanded, looking over to her for help.

“You won’t get any sympathy from me, Rose Tyler. It sounds like that Doctor deserved as well as he got.”

I gaped at my mother, sitting primly on the couch through the whole exchange and she sighed, getting to her feet.

“That said, Mickey Smith, rein it in, I don’t want blood on my carpet.” Mickey turned on her and Jackie rolled her eyes. “Down boy. I don’t know everything that happened, but from what Rose told me and what I’ve gleaned from this little exchange, it sounds like however bad it was they’re trying to move past it. And looking into the Doctor’s eyes I believe him when he says he’s truly sorry for whatever happened between him and my daughter.”

“Thanks Mum,” I began gratefully, and she turned her shrewd eyes on me.

“That’s not to say that you’re off the hook for disappearing overnight without telling me where you were, Rose Tyler!” she snapped, and I flinched, chastised.

“I didn’t mean to stay out without calling; I just left my mobile in my room.” I hedged, and cowered under the glare mum turned on me. Beside me the Doctor had risen to his feet again, keeping well away from both Mickey and my mum, who were both frowning deeply at the pair of us. I took a deep breath and decided to tackle them separately. “Mickey, in my room.” I said, pointing down the hall. He stared at me.

“I’m not leaving—!” he began and I grabbed his arm, propelling him ahead of me.

“Move it, Smith.” I pushed him down the hall, calling over my shoulder. “Mum, try not to kill the Doctor before I get back.” The Doctor’s eyes were wide and startled at being abandoned in the living room with my mum and I rolled my own eyes. “Play nice, you two. I’ll be back in a mo’.”

I shoved Mickey through the doorway into my room and shut the door behind us, leaning against it. He gave me a hurt look.

“Rose, after everything that happened, you can’t tell me you’re really going back!” he said at once.

I sighed heavily and moved to sit on the bed. After a pause, Mickey huffed and joined me. “After I left you yesterday I spent the day just traversing the city, trying to work past the pain you know?” I said softly, and felt Mickey shift on the bed next to me. I went on. “I ended up in Hyde Park—”

“That’s miles from here!” he said in surprise, turning to look at me, and I shrugged.

“Yeah, long walk.” I returned dryly. “Anyway, it was only after I got there that I realized I’d left my bag and my mobile at home after we left that morning. So I couldn’t have called even if I wanted to. And I did want to, Mickey.”

I lifted my head to look him in the eye so he could see the truth of my words there. He stared at me for a long moment then made a little jerk of his chin, accepting my words with a crude nod.

“I had just decided that I’d have to leg it home instead of taking the tube when I spotted another police box in the park. I…I almost passed it by. I wasn’t sure I could deal with it, you know? Jumping every time I saw one on a street corner, thinking it might be his…” Mickey’s arm slid around my shoulders and I leaned against him. “But the doors were locked on this one, and it was then that I knew…I just _knew_ that it had to be him. And then I heard him say my name…and there he was, just standin’ in the park behind me.”

Mickey absently rubbed my back as I related the details of my conversation with the Doctor and the decision that I’d come to.

“…and I know that it’s not gonna be easy,” I said finally, “but I have to try to make it work. Can you understand that?”

Mickey pulled back and took my hands in his. “God knows I don’t want to admit it, but it sounds like he really is serious about the mistake he made, and wants to do right by you.” he said at last, dark eyes fastened on mine. “Just…don’t forget me, alright? While you’re racing around the sky seein’ new worlds and stuff, remember that you’ve got a mate back on Earth who’ll always be waiting for you.”

I reached up to press my hand against the side of his face, looking fondly up at the boy who’d been so much more than just my friend over the years. “Of course I’ll never forget you, you idiot!” I said shakily, as tears threatened again. I gave Mickey a watery smile. “I’ll always love you, you know that, right? And I promise to visit more often.”

Mickey pulled me into a tight hug then, and I clung to him for a long moment, sniffling. “Well,” he said at last, clearing his throat noisily. “Is suppose we’d better get out there and make sure Jackie hasn’t murdered your alien boyfriend.”

I snorted and gave his shoulder an affectionate shove. “Shut up.” The bed creaked as the pair of us rose and crossed the room.

We found the Doctor perched awkwardly on a chair across from Jackie Tyler, who was draped across the sofa like an Egyptian Queen on a chaise lounge, sipping her now steaming tea.

“Well, I guess I should say I’m relieved you’re still in one piece.” I said as Mickey and I entered the living room again. Mum smiled serenely over her tea at me.

“Oh yes, the Doctor and I have been having quite a nice little chat,” she said, and I narrowed my eyes at her suspiciously.

“What about?”

The Doctor got hastily to his feet. “Oh nothing much, Rose Tyler. We’re all parting good friends…” he caught Mickey’s eye and amended his statement under his breath, “or at least hopefully not bitter enemies.”

Mickey blocked his way as he made to head for the front door and I tensed, wondering what was going to happen now. Mickey surprised me by holding out his hand toward the Doctor, who stared at it as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it. Mickey cleared his throat.

“Look Doctor, I know we don’t always get on, but Rose seems to think that you’re the one for her, so I’m going to try and look past her taste in men,” I rolled my eyes at him and his lips quirked the tiniest bit, “and call a truce.” Mickey continued to hold his hand out toward the Doctor until I nudged him and he glanced quickly between me and Mickey.

“He’s trying to make peace,” I muttered under my breath, and the Doctor finally lifted his own hand and clasped Mickey’s.

Mickey’s grin was more feral than friendly as the two men stood facing each other, their grips looking suspiciously tighter than need be. “So yeah, a truce; though I’m not sorry for decking you earlier.”

The Doctor nodded. “I swear on the souls of those I lost on Gallifrey that I won’t break your faith in me, Mickey Smith.”

Mickey held his gaze a moment longer then let go. To his credit, the Doctor showed zero signs of discomfort when his hand was released to him. I shot Mickey a sidelong glare and he grinned at me, shameless. The Doctor turned to my mother then.

“And to you, Jackie Tyler, I swear to protect your daughter and honor her wishes as long as she desires to travel with me.”

Mum nodded, having gotten to her feet during the exchange with Mickey. “Don’t think I won’t find you if you don’t, mister,” she threatened, and he grinned at her.

“I’d never dare doubt you, Jackie Tyler.”

I crossed the tiny room and threw my arms around my mum’s neck, hugging her tightly. “I love you, mum.”

“You too, darling. Don’t stay away so long, next time, alright? And if you can manage it, I’d really like your next visit to be a happy occasion.”

I laughed into her neck. “Thanks for always being there for me, mum.”

Then she pulled back from our embrace and stepped away from me. “You take care of my daughter, Doctor,” she said, not without affection, and then to me, “and you look after him too, Rose.”

I smiled at her. “I will.”

The Doctor stepped up beside me then and slipped his hand around mine, palm warm and slightly callused. I lifted my head to smile at him and heard Mickey make a gagging noise in the background, which he disguised as a horribly fake cough when I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Alright, alright, off with you then.” Mickey made shooing motions with his hands and grinned at me.

When we were almost at the door he called me back. “Oi, Tyler!”

I twisted in the cramped hall to look back at him. “Yeah, go on then…”

“You make sure he knows how lucky he is.” Mickey replied, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

I could see how much the comment cost him, and the grateful smile I sent his way conveyed all the joy and relief and thankfulness I could muster. “Darn right I will!” I called back, tightening my fingers around the Doctor’s hand. And then we were out in the hall and the door had closed behind us.

Neither of us said a word until we were through the hallway and down the stairs to the back lot where the TARDIS had her unofficial parking space. When were outside the blue front doors of the police box, I turned to the Doctor and grinned.

“That went a lot better than I expected.”

He turned an accusing look on me. “You promised I wouldn’t get hurt!”

I snorted. “I said nothing of the sort. And anyway, my mum was perfectly civil to you.”

“Your boy Mickey has something of a right hook,” the Doctor muttered darky.

I raised an eyebrow at him, crossing my arms. “Are you saying he was out of line?” I could tell that he wanted to say something to that but was wise enough not to, though, as he held the TARDIS door open for me to enter, I thought I heard him muttering about how he now had matching bruises on his face.

**~OOO~**

            **Whew! It took a lot of work to get Rose and the Doctor back into a good place again! Those two cause so much drama! ;) As always, I’m grateful to all my readers and really appreciate the time it takes you to leave a little review. (Seriously, I get childishly excited when I see the “New Story Review” subject line in my inbox!)**


	9. Chapter 9

**Hello sweet readers! Always a pleasure! I’m so sorry for the delay in this chapter. It just wasn’t working for me for ages! :( Thanks for being so patient. Now, who’s ready for a fluff chapter? I sure am…**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 9 -

            “What are you doing?” I asked, coming into the console room a few days after we’d left London. The Doctor, as was his custom, was fiddling with knobs and dials on the desktop of the console. He looked up when I walked in.

            “Ah, Rose! Just the person I wanted to see!” He straightened slightly and glanced over his shoulder at me, a grin on his face. I raised an eyebrow at him.

            “What’s got you all excited?”

            “I’ve finally figured out the coordinates for Leonenshie,” he said happily. “Brilliant place for a visit, Rose Tyler, and you’re going to love it.” He bounced across the platform and pulled a lever, causing the TARDIS to shudder and jolt forward and forcing both of us to grab hold of the desktop to steady ourselves.

            “And what, pray tell, is so special about Planet Leon?” I questioned, grinning back at the Doctor unable to help myself; his smile was infectious.

“Le-on-en-shee,” the Doctor corrected me without pause, looking like a little boy on Christmas. “It’s a Delta Galaxy level four planet!”

He seemed so thrilled about the whole thing that I hated to break in yet again with my pesky human non-understanding. Not that that stopped me. “Um….yay?”

The Doctor finally turned to look at me. “You don’t appear to have grasped the importance of this trip, Rose.” He looked a little deflated at my lack of enthusiasm.

I shot him an inquisitive look, all wide eyes and expectant curiosity, though I smiled to soften the expression. “Maybe if you told me what a level four planet was….?”

That pulled him up short. “Oh. Right.”  He pressed a few more buttons and yanked a lever down a few notches, steadying the TARDIS’ flight pattern, and then moved around the console to where I’d just straightened up. “Well, Earth is a level five planet, right? So very new in the universe, just starting out…” I nodded, having heard all this before, and the Doctor continued. “Well Leonenshie is a level four, which means that it’s even younger than Earth; still in its infancy if you will.”

Ok, so Planet Leon was new- _ish_ , but that still didn’t tell me just what made it so special. I said as much to the Doctor and his expression became pained.

“Oh dear, sweet, human Rose Tyler,” he began, and I narrowed my eyes at him. He was getting that look on his face that was usually followed by a lengthy rant about the wonders of the universe and how the human race would go on to do great and glorious things once they ‘grew up a little’. “Leonenshie was classified a level four planet by the Shadow Proclamation upon discovery five thousand years back.”

“Which means…” I prodded, cocking my head to the side and spreading my hands palms-up before me. The Doctor’s grin widened.

“It’s empty.”

I blinked up at him. “Empty?”

“Bare. Vacant. Void. Uninhabited.” He said each word gleefully, as if it should mean something vital to me. I crossed my arms and leaned back against the railing.

“Forgive my ignorance, Doctor, but I fail to see the excitement about visiting a planet that is so far behind Earth, not to mention the rest of the universe, that nothing is on it.”

The Doctor’s expression became chastising. “Really, Rose, weren’t you listening? I said it’s a level _four_ planet, not a level _one_. It’s had time to grow and evolve, but there’s no civilization yet. And no one can colonize it as it’s still protected under the Shadow Proclamation’s Development Act. Which means that if we sneak over right now…”

“…we will be the first to see it!” we both said together. The Doctor was rocking back and forth on his heels now; he looked so utterly pleased that I’d come to this conclusion at the same time he had.

 “Too right we will!” he said, turning back to the console and pressing a complicated series of numbers on a screen, followed by hitting a large blue button with childish vigor. The TARDIS gave a shudder and we both grabbed on to the railing to prevent any unnecessary floor waxing with our bodies. After another moment the time machine settled into its rhythm and our course was smooth once more.

The trip didn’t take long, and soon the Doctor was grabbing my hand in his and pulling me at a run across the room toward the police box doors. I tripped along beside him, stumbling to keep up, and then leaped out the doors behind him on the heels of his finger snap.

Neither of us said anything for a long moment, and then the Doctor leaned down to my ear and whispered, “Welcome to the birth of a world.”  

**~OOO~**

There was nothing but fog before us. Pure, undulating, silvery, and so thick that I felt as if I could have sat upon one of the swirls wafting about our feet and it would have supported my weight without issue. The air tasted metallic and reminded me of the smell that comes after it rains….petrichor, that was the word; fresh and earthy and new.

After another moment of staring into the mist, I turned to the Doctor and whispered, “I don’t see anything.”

His answering grin was slightly admonishing. “Can’t see the forest for the trees, Rose Tyler?”

I blinked at him, frowning a little. “And just what’s that supposed to mean?”

His fingers tightened just the tiniest bit around my own, reassuring, and he smiled. “You’re looking too closely, Rose. Come on, let’s go exploring!” And with that the Doctor strode off into the fog, vanishing from sight. I only had a moment to feel properly nervous about trouncing off into the opaque fog, before the Doctor’s hand around mine propelled me away from the safety of the TARDIS and out into mystery.

He led me a short distance in silence, and I’d just opened my mouth to ask where we were going when shafts of light pierced through the dimness and the fog began to lift. The sight that stretched out before us as we emerged from the swirling silvery mist was stunning.

We stood at the top of a cliff over which innumerous, deep-turquoise, pools were stacked in a descending pattern down the rock face. Each pool poured into the one next to and below it, all connected by small channels and cascading into each other with showers of sun-shot droplets. The intensity of the colour of each pool’s water depended upon its depth, so that some were a darker blue while others were shallow and pale, though all of them sparkled with the fractured light of a drowned star due to the three suns that blazed low in the orange sky above us, bathing the entire landscape in tones of perpetual sunset. The ground on which we stood, now visible with the lifted fog, was a mix of silvery-gold grasses and trees with matching leaves grew in thick, winding groves. It was breathtaking, and I turned to face the Doctor with the rapt expression of delight that new planets often brought on my face.

I found him staring up at the sky with a shocked expression, brown eyes wide and jaw slack. He couldn’t have looked more gob-smacked if Captain Jack had turned up and danced naked in front of him wearing nothing except his Vortex Manipulator. My feeling of euphoria faded slightly and I patted his arm gently to get his attention.

“Doctor? What’s wrong?”

With a start, the Doctor jerked out of his daze and turned to face me, eyes still slightly glazed over. “W-what?”

“Are you alright?”

He gave his head a little shake and forced an echo of his usually brilliant grin onto his face. “Fine, fine, Rose Tyler. Never better!”

I frowned at him now. “Doctor,” I began sternly, and caught at his wrist when he started to turn away again; he allowed me to turn his body back around though, and regarded me with a solemn expression when I insisted on asking “What is it?

The question was quiet but firm, and I watched as sadness etched itself into the Doctor’s face, carving slowly into his features like water over stone. He smiled then, an expression of longing and nostalgia, of hopelessness and promise, warring in his eyes.

“Did I ever tell you what Gallifrey looked like, Rose?” he whispered, voice barely audible, and I found myself holding my breath as I shook my head, eyes locked on his, and his expression lightened.

The Doctor shifted then, slipping his wrist out of my grasp and then taking my hand and leading me a few feet across the open expanse of the cliff top toward a tree with a twisting, purple-blue trunk and alternating silver and gold leaves. He folded himself to the ground, leaning against the trunk and I sat down next to him, waiting for him to continue.

“This planet reminds me a lot of it,” he continued at last, voice quiet, and this time the smile he turned on me was genuine, if wistful, and my body relaxed. “Gallifrey’s sky was a deeper, more amber orange in colour than Leonenshie’s atmosphere, and it only had two suns instead of three—which is probably why there’s so much fog in the air here, protecting any living thing from too much direct radiation—but the way the sunlight sparked off the leaves just now…” he paused for a long moment, turning to look out over the pools and listen to the gentle splashing of the multiple waterfalls, “…it just reminded me so much of…home…”

I leaned against his shoulder as he trailed off, lacing my fingers in his and setting our entwined hands on my leg. “Do you miss it very much?”

“I miss it every day,” he answered honestly, “but after so many years the ache has dulled some. It’s like looking back on the home where you grew up as a child but moved away from when you were older. There are good memories and bad ones, so thinking back on it is always bittersweet.” He squeezed my fingers and I lifted my head to look up at him. He was looking down at me with a fond expression on his face. “It’s just that I wasn’t expecting this place to look so close to Gallifrey. Being a level four planet and not technically open to the visiting public yet, not much information was available about Leonenshie. Really, all I knew was that its atmosphere had breathable air.” He shrugged a little helplessly. “So seeing this…” he gestured with his free hand to encompass everything from the orange sky to the glittering forest, “…it caught me off-guard.”

“Do you want to leave?” I asked hesitantly, unsure if staying here was hard for the Doctor, if it hurt him to be surrounded by something that reminded him so deeply of the home that he’d been partially responsible for destroying. The Doctor shook his head though, a gentle look on his face.

“No,” he said, and I looked at him hard, trying to decipher if he was lying or not. He reached over then, to gently trail his fingers down my cheek. “I’m glad that I could share this tiny reflection of my homeland with you, as unprecedented as it may be.”

Something about the look in his eyes, the feel of his fingers still tracing patterns up and down my cheek, caused me to blush in a pleased sort of way. It felt a little like suddenly meeting the parents of someone you’d been dating for a while. If Gallifrey really was similar to Leonenshie then it must be magnificent.

I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch, and his fingers stopped moving as the Doctor cradled the side of my head with his hand. “Thank-you for telling me about your home.” I said softly, feeling the silence of the empty world around us, no birds, or insects, or other creatures making noise like back home, only the water and the gentle breeze stirring the trees. “I always want to know more about you.”

When I opened my eyes again his face was _right there_ …inches from mine. He had shifted against the tree, twisted his body so that he could lift his other hand to my face, hesitating in case I reacted badly, but when I didn’t pull away he leaned down and my eyelashes fluttered closed again.

The Doctor’s kiss was achingly sweet this time, his lips moving with extreme gentleness against mine. I lifted my hands to catch at his wrists, steadying myself as I cautiously leaned in to him. He pulled back after far too short a time though, smiling down at me as I blinked at him in the amber light.

“Don’t worry about me, Rose Tyler,” he said quietly, still gazing down at me as if I were a precious object. “Gallifrey is my past, and though I’ll never forget it, I also refuse to let it rule me. _You_ are my present…” Here he trailed off, hesitating, as if he had been about to say more but cut himself off.

 _You are my always_ …I thought back at him, not quite able to give the words voice just yet, though they beat a constant rhythm in my heart.

I reached for him again and he sat back, dropping his hands from my face and then pushing to his feet. He turned away from me to face the reflecting water and the gleaming grasses, sparking like tiny flames in the sunlight, and brushed his suit off as I rose beside him. I could only see his profile but I could tell he looked a little uncomfortable. I wondered if he was regretting kissing me again, or if he was too worried about losing control again to allow himself more than a chaste peck.

I thought back on our conversation in the TARDIS and how the Doctor had confessed to having feelings for me. He hadn’t said he loved me, but then, I hadn’t said those exact words yet either. The last time I’d let loose in a torrent of emotion all I’d really demanded of him was the acknowledgement that my feelings for him after so much time couldn’t be that unexpected. I guessed I couldn’t really blame him for his own awkwardness when I hadn’t yet mustered the courage to say those three little words out loud myself.

I moved to stand next to him, looking out over the cliff again, and the fog curled around our ankles, starting to build once more. “Will you…tell me more? About Gallifrey, I mean…” I asked after a long pause, the words coming out haltingly.  

The Doctor said nothing for a long stretch and I wondered if the memories were really so painful to speak of. We’d been on so many adventures, but for all our time together he’d barely said two words about his home to me that didn’t involve the Daleks and the Time War.

“What do you want to know?” he said at last, and I slipped my hand into his, lacing our fingers once more and leading him into a walk around the rocky plain, toward the silvery-gold forest whose leaves tickled like nature made music as the wind tripped through their branches.

“Anything.” I said, leaning my head against his shoulder as we walked. “Everything.”

And so he told me. About the Schism, and Rassilon, and his parents. About the Time Vortex and growing up learning about the intricate delicacies of the Time Stream, and how TARDIS’ worked (well the bare basics about how TARDIS’ worked anyway). About the first place he’d ever visited when he stole the TARDIS and how he both did and did not regret his decision to leave the planet. And about how he wished he could show it to me in person.

By now we’d made a circuit of the forest and emerged back out of the trees next to the TARDIS once more. We stood by the front doors, me with my back against them and the Doctor facing me, the softly glowing light of the suns backlighting his body and throwing his profile into shadow.

Almost without realizing I was doing it, I stretched up my hand to trace my fingers along his jaw, over the place where Mickey had clocked him days earlier. I could only just make out the fading bruise now. The Doctor went still under my touch, and the wind ruffled his thick hair.

“Rose…” he began, but I stepped closer, silencing him.

“Shhh…” And he was silent then, allowing me to inspect his face.

I trailed my fingertips in a barely-there caress along his jaw, feeling the smoothness of his cheek as I gently prodded the bruise. He clenched his jaw ever so slightly when I did that and I immediately pulled my hand back.

“Does it still hurt?” The Doctor shook his head but I knew better. “I’m sorry he did that.” I said softly, recalling the fierce protectiveness that had flashed in Mickey’s eyes that night, and knowing that he’d only been looking out for me.

The Doctor caught my small hand in his, wrapping his fingers around mine and tugging me gently toward him as he pressed my trapped hand against his chest. I could feel the rhythmic cadence of his hearts beneath our hands. “I would have done the same, if not worse, if I had thought someone had hurt you.” he said in a low voice, and I felt my heart start to beat a little faster at the intensity in the Doctor’s eyes at those words. “I could never begrudge him any small revenge after what I did to you.”

“Doctor,” I said slowly, taking a steadying breath and wondering why my heart was suddenly racing. “I forgave you that night in the TARDIS. The only person harboring regret right now is you. You need to forgive yourself.”

He looked down at me for an immeasurable moment, his face still difficult to read with the suns behind him. If I stared hard enough, though, I could just make out the Doctor’s dark eyes, watching my face as if trying to read a lie in my words. He wasn’t going to find one.

When he spoke at last, his voice was pitched low and laced with something akin to awe. “What did I ever do to deserve you, Rose Tyler?”

I felt my lips twitch as I started to smile, but just then I felt the Doctor’s free hand come up against my back, pressing my body forward against his chest. My hands splayed against his jacket at the sudden movement and then he was kissing me again. There was no hesitation in his lips this time though. This time, he didn’t hold back.

I leaned into the kiss, surprise quickly giving way to desire as my fingers curled around the lapels of the Doctor’s jacket, pulling myself closer even as I pushed up on my toes so that he didn’t have to bend so far down. I was very aware of the way the Doctor’s long fingers clutched at my back, pressing me harder against him, while his other hand slid along my neck to tangle in my long hair.

I wasn’t aware of doing so exactly, but somewhere in the midst of our desperate kisses I found my hands pushing his unbuttoned jacket off his shoulders, barely pausing for breath as I tugged it down his arms. The Doctor shrugged out of his suit coat with amazing grace, considering how his hands didn’t seem to leave my body for more than a few seconds, and I started a little when my back suddenly bumped up against something hard—the TARDIS doors I realized in a bit of a daze.

Heat suddenly flared across my face as I felt the Doctor’s hands slid up under my tank top and skim across the bare skin of my back, leaving goosebumps behind wherever his fingers touched. I gasped a little at his confidence this time, wondering if he was going to pull back again, knowing that I didn’t want him to.

As the Doctor lowered his head to my neck, nudging my head back so he could kiss his way along my throat and collarbone, my hazy vision swam with a whirl of silver and gold from the canopy above us and I felt my knees go weak. When I slumped a little against the door the Doctor’s embrace tightened around me automatically. He lifted his head from where he’d been laying a trail of fire down my throat, and pulled back to look me in my eyes. His face looked much as I was sure mine must appear: over-bright eyes, flushed cheeks, rumpled hair. We were both breathing hard.

“Rose?”

There was so much in that simple word. A question about whether or not what we’d just been doing had been ok. Wonder at me as a person. Permission to continue.

Keeping my eyes locked on the Doctor’s, I reached behind me and fumbled with the door to the TARDIS, opening it clumsily and then reaching out to take his hand in mine. Abandoning his suit jacket to the Leonenshie wilderness, the Doctor allowed me to lead him inside the ship without a word. I walked across the console room with my heart pounding, and then down a side hallway, stopping outside a door and opening it with a trembling hand before leading him inside.

When I turned back around, I found the Doctor standing just inside the door of my bedroom, wide brown eyes flickering between me … and the bed behind me. He frowned at me, and I stepped closer, stretching up to kiss him softly. His arms came around me automatically but he pulled back after barely brushing his lips against mine.

“Doctor?” I asked, the word coming out somewhere between a question and a protest. He started to step back, carefully maneuvering his body away from mine, inch by inch, as if by doing it slowly I wouldn’t notice. I did; and pressed closer for every inch he gave.

“Rose,” he started quickly, looking a bit cornered and taking another step back toward the safety of the hallway. “You don’t have to…I mean, you don’t need to prove anything…”

I narrowed my eyes at him, hurt…and a little angry. “I’m not trying to _prove_ anything Doctor.” I said a little coolly, starting to step out of his embrace. “Other than that I want to be with you.”

The Doctor halted his retreat at my words, and his arms tightened as he changed tack and refused to let me go. “That’s not what I meant, Rose.”

I pursed my lips a little and stared defiantly up at him, daring him tell me that he didn’t want this too.

“Then what did you mean?” I demanded, feeling my face flush for an entirely different reason now. A suspicious pricking had started at the backs of my eyes. Had I read him wrong again? Did he think I was just some pushy human girl who couldn’t control herself despite having promised to do just that in this very ship not so many days ago?

Hands came up to frame my face and I held my body ridged, refusing to give in to the melting sensation which my brain had latched onto at his touch.

“Rose,” and there was infinite tenderness in my name this time. I lifted my eyes, biting my lip hard. The Doctor gave me a tiny smile. “I want to…all of this…trust me, I do,” and I wasn’t sure if it was just the dim lighting in my room but I thought that his pale face had darkened a bit as he’d said those words, “But I don’t want you to feel any pressure to prove that you’re over my reaction from the last time we…er… started this…” He paused, took a deep breath, and brushed his thumbs over my cheeks. “I want to do this right. I don’t want to rush you…”

I felt my face relax at his words, expression smoothing out as he continued to watch me with warm brown eyes, waiting for me to react. My hands caught at his t-shirt, plucking absently at the soft material as I tried to work out how to put my chaotic feelings into words. In the end I didn’t need to think about it, the words flowed out naturally, as if they’d always been there in the air between us. Maybe they had.

“Doctor…I…” I ducked my head, feeling the blush on my cheeks blaze up again. Swallowing hard I pushed on. “I…I’m in love with you.”

My body tensed, shoulders hunching as soon as the words were out. I’d said them. After all these years, after all this time of thinking it _every day_ that I ran with the Doctor, finally…

But he wasn’t saying anything back. In fact, the Doctor’s hands had stilled on my face once more, then dropped away. I started to step back, my heart tripping like a frightened bird and my eyes stinging. Oh god…he didn’t feel the same way! Why did I have to go and open my mouth? Why—

And his arms were suddenly back around me, his hands pulling my hips hard against his. I let out a gasp of surprise, jerking my head up to look at his face and the Doctor slid a large hand around the back of my head, holding me securely as his mouth crashed back over mine. I let out a little cry of muffled surprise at this reaction, digging my nails into his chest through the thin material of his gray t-shirt, but the Doctor didn’t seem to notice. His kisses were far less restrained now, hungrier than they’d been when we’d been snogging outside the TARDIS, and he nudged my lips apart almost roughly, sliding his tongue over mine.

I found myself panting for air when his deep kisses left me breathless and barely flinched when his hands slid under my top once more. However, despite my lust-filled haze, I did tense a little when I felt the Doctor’s long fingers curl around the hem of my shirt and begin to tug it upwards. I didn’t stop him though, and in very little time my top was over my head and somewhere on the floor next to us. The Doctor couldn’t seem to get enough of touching my skin now…his mouth back on my neck, then across my shoulders…my throat…and I moaned into his neck as his hands skimmed over my bare arms and back, caressing my body as he pulled me tighter against his lean frame.

I slid my arms up to run my fingers through his thick, glorious hair, recalling hazily how much he’d seemed to like it the last time I’d done that, and wasn’t disappointed. I wound my fingers through tuffs of his rather-wild-looking locks and tugged—a little less than gently. A low growl that sounded a lot like “ _Rose…!_ ” came helplessly from the Doctor’s lips as his hands pulled my hips harder against his own. This movement pressed something else hard against my thigh and I was suddenly very aware of how invested in this moment the Doctor was. I didn’t have much time to process this discovery, however, as the Doctor had abandoned my collarbones and was doing something with his tongue in my mouth at that moment that I was fairly certain no one on Earth had a technical term for, and I lost my train of thought.

I hadn’t realized he’d been guiding us backwards until the backs of my knees bumped up against my bed. I gasped a little into his mouth as realization washed over me, and felt the Doctor respond by murmuring something I couldn’t understand into my ear. Then his arm tightened around my back, holding me firmly against his chest while his free hand eased us back onto the bed.

I slid my hands into his hair again, holding his face to mine as we went down, and a low growl vibrated against my lips as he kissed me hard, one arm trapped beneath my back and the other supporting his weight above me. One of the Doctor’s knees slid between my thighs as he bent over me and I felt my toes leave the floor, shoes slipping off and dropping to the ground as he shifted my body closer, sliding me higher onto the bed. I felt my stomach squirm with nervousness and desire.

I twitched a little when I felt his hands slid down my shoulders, drawing my bra straps down with them, but almost before I had time to process the smoothness of this movement, the Doctor’s hot mouth was pressing kisses down my neck and shoulder, and one of his hands was sliding itself under my knee, hitching my leg up and hooking it around his waist so that he could roll his hips against mine. I squeaked in shock and felt the subtle vibrations of a chuckle shiver against my throat.

My chest rose and fell rapidly, and felt like I might be having a mild heart attack. I tried to focus on the Doctor, but the combination of his mouth and hands…and _hips_ …weren’t making it very easy for me to do much more than lay limply on the bed and let him do whatever the hell he wanted. With what surmounted to a huge amount of willpower, I wrenched my mind out of dizzyingly realistic fantasies and back to the present, and lifted my arms off the bed. I had a rare opportunity here, I reminded myself, to inspect something normally zealously guarded.

Trying to ignore what the Doctor was doing, I ran my hands experimentally over his chest, feeling the staccato beating of his hearts, and enjoying the way his ab muscles tensed when my fingers skated across them. Gaining courage, I moved slowly lower, tracing my fingertips over his lower back and slim hips, marveling at the toned muscles hidden beneath his lean frame—then clutching spasmodically at his belt when he suddenly rocked his hips against me again, wringing a shuddering gasp from my throat.

The Doctor was much stronger than he looked on the outside; I’d always known that, but the way he handled me now, a mix of unbridled passion and exquisite tenderness, pulling me against him as if he’d never let me go again, then skimming his fingers over my skin light as a breath of air… my head reeled.

The Doctor had moved from the relatively safe territory of my arms and neck now… pulling me back to the present with a jolt when I realized his mouth and tongue were working their way across the swell of my breasts, and I gasped a bit wildly, startled, when his head dipped between them. The Doctor pulled back at once, his head jerking up and his hands tightening convulsively, one on my hip where his thumb had just hooked around the waistband of my jeans, and the other against my back where he’d been lifting my body toward him, fumbling with the clasp of my bra. His eyes flew to mine, hazy with desire, but still aware.

My heart was throwing itself against my ribs now and my breathing was coming in shallow pants, my eyes wide. “Doctor…I…” I couldn’t finish that sentence; I didn’t know how it would end. I wanted this. I did.

But…

He started to pull back, lifting his body slowly off mine, inch by inch, as if fighting gravity. “Too much…too fast…” he stated simply, his expression closing off as he moved away from me, trying to reign in his own breathing. “I’m sorry, Rose. I broke my promise.” His eyes were nearly black with suppressed desire.

I fought to get my heartbeat under control. “No, I—I’m fine. Really…”

He was supporting himself on both hands now, elbows locked as he leaned over me. “Rose, you’re shaking like a leaf.” He moved one big hand to stroke the side of my face softly. “I scared you again, didn’t I?” It wasn’t a question.

I turned my head to the side, feeling a little cornered as I protested his statement. “No, you didn’t—”

“ _Rose_.” My name came out almost sternly and I twisted back to look up at the Doctor again. He was looking down at me with concern in his warm, brown eyes, and his eyebrows were knit together. I itched to reach up and smooth out his brow.

“You didn’t,” I insisted, but pressed on before he could argue again. “Not really. It’s just that… _this_ …what we’re…I mean, I haven’t…with anyone…before…” If a person could literally catch fire from humiliation I could have burned down the TARDIS in this moment. I turned my head away again, unable to bear seeing the Doctor’s expression.

He was silent for a long moment, possibly from shock, but when he spoke his voice was quiet and gentle. “You mean, you and Mickey never…” He let the question trail off but I knew instantly what he was asking.

I shifted awkwardly beneath him, squirming on the duvet as I answered honestly. “We messed around, sure, but it never felt…you know…like the right time…” I really couldn’t believe I was discussing my romantic life with the Doctor while we were in such a, well, compromising position. A hand cupped my face just then, gently turning my head back to look up into the Doctor’s eyes.

“Rose,” he said quietly, voice careful now, and his body very still. “If you’re not ready… I mean…” He swallowed hard, his brow furrowing as he looked down at me lying below him on the bed, my chest still heaving as I tried to calm down. “I would never push you. You know that, right? We can slow down. Or stop.” He caressed my face again, threading his fingers through my hair as he tried to comfort me.

I stared up into the concerned face of the man I loved, hovering over me looking so anxious, and felt my body slowly relax. I lifted one hand and pressed it against his chest over one of his hearts, letting the rhythm sooth me. The Doctor knelt over me, motionless, allowing me to come to my own decision about how far to take this once more. I considered all the things I knew in this moment: I wanted him; he wanted me; I was in love with the Doctor and had said so; he had confessed deep feelings for me but had not. I wondered if he was just afraid of saying the words, of making them real and tangible and unable to be taken back, because of the complexities of our Time Streams? In my heart of hearts I knew that I’d rather have only an hour with the Doctor—and those three words—than years with him, knowing that he could never make himself give them voice. And I came to a decision.

“Kiss me…?” The request came out almost plaintively and I wanted to clear my throat and say it over again in a stronger tone. The Doctor hesitated, clearly unsure of where I was going with this, then bent his arms and dipped his torso down until his chest brushed mine. His eyelids slipped closed and he did kiss me then, but cautiously, and tenderly, clearly taking care not to read too much into my words.

I pressed up against him, my hands rising to settle on his arms and gently caress the muscles and tendons that tensed beneath my fingers. I kissed him back, my Doctor, sweetly, and then pulled back. I found him watching me intently as my eyelashes fluttered open. He had felt something in that kiss; I could see it in his eyes. My heart squeezed.

“Alright,” came the Doctor’s low voice, and I blinked at him, confused.

“A-alright?”

He smiled down at me, the slightly crooked grin that had caused my heart to skip a beat since the first time I’d seen it. “Alright,” he repeated, and I had a bizarre flashback to the last time we’d had this same one-worded conversation. Then he pushed himself up, rolling off me and sliding off the bed to stand next to it. I watched him stretch his lean body like a cat, then straighten and shove both hands through his messy hair, sticking it out worse than before. When he turned back to face me, his regular bright grin was on his face.

I pushed myself up on my elbows to stare at him in bemusement. “Doctor?”

His expression became gentle. “I understand, Rose, you don’t have to say anything. You need time to figure this out.” He paused briefly, and something flickered in his eyes. “We both do.”

I sat all the way up, fighting the urge to cover my chest with my arms, even though I wasn’t exactly naked and had recently been rather passionately snogging the man across from me. I tried to read his face, to gage his true feelings, but all I saw was kindness and understanding in the Doctor’s eyes. And a little regret, shown through the tightening of his eyes and subtle crease of his forehead. The feelings were plain because I felt them too. I had wanted him so desperately this afternoon—still did, in this very second—but there were other things that needed to be worked out before our relationship could go any further. I had been telling the truth when I’d told the Doctor that I’d forgiven him; more so when I’d blurted out that I was in love with him, but until I knew for absolute certain his feelings about me…until _he_ could say the words out loud…we were at an impasse.

**~OOO~**

***fans self* Is it hot in here or is it just me? ;) Don’t hate me for breaking it off…Rose and the Doctor are the epitome of “In a Relationship and It’s Complicated”. XD Thanks for reading, and again, sorry for the delay in the posting of this chapter. I don’t want to rush Rose and the Doctor’s relationship (at the same time, I hope I’m not dragging it out too much either…) so I’m trying to give a little treat without spoiling your dinner as it were. Lol. Of course, this means that there’s more to come. Lots more. ;)**


	10. Chapter 10

**Wow! I can’t believe this fic has hit the double digits! Thanks so much for sticking with me this long, everyone! :) Slow and steady wins the race??? Good luck, Doctor!**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 10 -

                The Doctor left my room shortly after that, saying only that he’d give me some time to myself and that, when I felt ready, I could come find him...if I wanted. He disappeared without saying where, exactly, he was planning to go, but I figured it wouldn’t take too much effort to locate him later on if I asked the TARDIS to help me.

            I retrieved my tank top from the floor after the door closed, and pulled it back on with shaking hands, then I flopped back onto the bed, covering my face with my hands. I’d never felt so conflicted about anything in my entire life. I tugged one of my pillows out from under the duvet and curled around it, hugging it to my chest and sighing deeply. This was one of those times I wished I had a good girlfriend to ring up. Mickey was true mate, he’d certainly proved that during my last visit, but this just wasn’t something I could discuss with him. And mum, well, we were close, but there are some things that a girl just can’t talk to her parents about without dying of humiliation.

I wanted to both cry and smile, which made for a very messed up mindset. On the one hand, I felt completely embarrassed over the way I’d led the Doctor on, snogging him outside the TARDIS and then bringing him into my bedroom, bold as brass… But on the other hand, my heart felt light, protected, by the way he’d tried to make sure over and over again that I really wanted to do this…and the way he’d been so understanding when I’d all but had a panic attack on the bed. Still, a large part of me just wanted to hide in my room forever after this; I didn’t know how I could ever look the Doctor in the eye again after being so intimate and then shying away.

            The TARDIS gave me a mental nudge, and somehow, despite the ship being a machine, I felt a sense of reassurance, as if the TARDIS had taken physical form and given me a sisterly hug. I smiled weakly into my pillow, surprisingly feeling better.

            After another few minutes I sat up, straightened my clothes, and went into the ensuite to wash my face and run a brush through my hair. I stared at my reflection for a long time, willing my cheeks to lessen their pink flush…which only caused me to recall what had caused their colour to begin with: strong hands, toned muscles, lips tracing a pattern over my skin…This train of thought only worsened the issue though, and I pressed a cold washcloth against my face with a groan.  

            When I felt almost presentable again, I cautiously emerged from my room; poking my head out into the hallway like gopher popping out of its hole. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I saw the Doctor in the hall—I shouldn’t have been thinking about pulling my head back inside and slamming the door, at any rate—but the way was devoid of any loitering Time Lords and I took a deep breath and stepped out into corridor.

            The TARDIS nudged me helpfully as I walked, gently tugging my mind in the direction of the Doctor as I prowled the hallways. I felt on tenterhooks, scared to death to face him now. _What would I say? What would_ he _say? Why was this whole thing so damn complicated?_ The questions bounced around inside my head as I tiptoed down another twisting corridor and passed the doors to the Library. The TARDIS guided me past it without pause though, and I continued on. Eventually I found myself back in the console room—the one place I had been trying to avoid, as there was a larger chance that I’d run into the Doctor there, and I was still trying to pull myself together.

            I’d just crept up the grated ramp, peered around the Central Beacon and found the room vacant, when a sound came from the far side of the room. My head swiveled toward the TARDIS’ doors just in time to see one open and the Doctor stick his head inside. He scanned the room a little blankly for a moment, as if looking for something he couldn’t quite find, and then his eyes fell on me and he beamed. The grin lit up his entire face, his brown eyes dancing, and for a moment he just stared at me.

            I hovered by the console for a drawn-out minute, playing with the sleeves of my zippered hoodie and trying to make myself look him in the eye. During one of the cautious flickers of my eyes to his, I caught the softening of his expression from excitement to tenderness, and I took a hesitant step toward him. The Doctor sobered slightly, still smiling, but now more in the encouraging sort of manner one might use to coax a skittish cat out from under the bed. He slowly raised his arm and held his hand out to me.

            I took another small step toward him, feeling my heart beating hard again, and had to pause and take a deep breath to calm myself down. This was just the Doctor, I reminded myself, not a monster or terrifying alien that I’d encountered on some random planet. Never mind his own background, the man before me was simply that: a man.

My Doctor.

            So why was I so nervous around him all of the sudden?

            He’d been the most kind, understanding, and noble man a girl could ask for in a situation like this one…acting like I was afraid of him was doing him a discourtesy. I fought for normalcy and forced a small smile onto my lips.

            I took another step, almost to him now, and then another.

The Doctor waited patiently, still halfway outside the TARDIS, until I reached him. When I raised my hand to take his, I was relieved that it only trembled faintly. The Doctor curled his long fingers carefully around mine, leading me from the TARDIS, but when the door swung closed behind me I pulled up short.

“Doctor?”

He said nothing, just let me observe as he stood silently next to me, simply holding my hand.

The suns had set and the twin moons of Leonenshie had risen in opposite sides of the sky. They were very close the planet’s surface and as such appeared rather large in proportion to what I was used to—about triple the size of a rising moon just off the horizon on Earth. They glowed with a silvery sheen, and their soft lighting had a soothing effect on the rest of the landscape. Every blade of silver-gold grass and all the leaves in the trees glowed softly, as though tipped in metal. The sky between the moons overhead was crammed with stars, such a sight as you could only glimpse if you were in the London countryside, away from the leeching city lights.

So many stars…I felt like I could leap into the air and crash into the midst of them, scattering their light like a handful of glitter.

There was a gentle breeze then, a little cooler than when we’d been outside earlier, and I shivered, sliding my hand out of the Doctor’s to wrap my arms around my stomach. The movement pulled my attention down to the ground, and it was then that I saw the blanket stretched out across the gently waving grass, silver in the moonlight. It was weighted down on all four corners with stones, and off to one side was a dusty, unmarked, bottle and two glasses.

I turned toward the Doctor then, eyes wide, unable to speak, and found him watching me. He’d stopped smiling now, and his serious eyes held a flicker of uncertainty. The longer I stared at him without speaking, the more uncomfortable he seemed. The wind blew past again and I dropped my eyes, a shiver rocking through my body. And then, all at once, I was enveloped in warmth.

A muted _fwumph_ sounded, and I realized that the Doctor had retrieved his suit jacket and draped it around my shoulders. My hands came up automatically to clutch at the lapels so that it wouldn’t slide off, and my head came up with them. 

“What is all this?” I finally asked, grateful that speech had been returned to me, and the Doctor lifted a hand to rub at the back of his head.

“Er…would it sound very odd if I said it was a…well…” He rubbed at the back of his head some more, looking nervous, and I frowned up at him, confused.

“A what?”

“A…well…a date?” He finished the sentence all in a rush, looking quickly to my face to see my reaction.

My mouth dropped open in a silent ‘O’ of astonishment. I blinked at him in the silvery night. “A date?” I parroted, surprise coloring my tone.

The Doctor pursed his lips, shoving his hands into his pockets and looking highly concerned that I wasn’t getting the point. “Yes, a date, Rose Tyler. The traditional way a male and a female spend time together, _properly_ , getting to know each other.”

I turned all the way to face him now. “A _date_?” I said again, almost incredulously, trying to wrap my head around the concept. We’d never been the type for traditional anything, not when it came to the Doctor and my relationship.

Dating.

Me and the Doctor.

It felt strange.

The Doctor frowned, brows knitting together as he turned to face me as well. This was obviously not going the way he’d hoped. “I realized that we’ve been going about this whole thing backwards, what with the mad rows first, then the declarations, then the…er…—well, you know what I mean.” He looked a little flustered and yanked his hands out of his pockets again to fiddle absently with his jacket, only to realize it was around my shoulders. His arms flapped a bit awkwardly for a few seconds before he dropped them down to his sides and clenched his fingers into fists, attempting nonchalance.

I chose not to bring up the fact that there had been only one proper declaration so far, seeing as he looked so earnest. He went on.

“Anyway, I realized that we’d—that is, I’d—been going about this all wrong. Life can’t always be excitement and danger and fleeing death and jumping from one adventure to the next without pausing for breath, can it, Rose?” He turned back to me, and I saw one of his hands twitch, as if he’d been about to reach for me but had forced himself to remain still. He didn’t wait for me to reply though, pressing on after only a moment. “You showed me that certain things, _important_ things,” and his eyes seemed to look right through me as he spoke, “need to be done slowly.”

“C-certain things?” I echoed, and the crooked smile I loved so much unfurled across the Doctor’s face.

“Courtship, Rose Tyler. Dating. Wooing, if you will.”

My heart skipped a beat. “C-courtship?” My fingers clenched around the suit jacket. Did he have any idea what sort of end goal that word entailed?

The Doctor lifted a hand slowly then, being careful not to startle me, and gently pried one of my hands away from his coat, lacing my fingers in his. “I realized this afternoon that I had been selfish, Rose, thinking only of the way _I’d_ always lived my life. Racing here and there, seeking adventure and excitement, taking pleasure as I found it… I didn’t stop to think about the different way your mind works. I’ve always been so awed at the way humans process emotions, so many levels and variations, so passionate and expressive! But I never stopped to consider the fragility of human emotion, and for that I have no excuse.” He paused to bring his other hand up, hovering a few inches from my face in a way that proclaimed his anxiousness. Then he gently cupped my cheek. “So in short, yes, courtship, Rose Tyler. Starting properly, at the beginning, and taking the slow route.” Another pause, this one more apprehensive than the last. “That is, if it’s alright with you.”

He dropped his hand from my face and waited, clearly striving to look calm and indifferent to my response, but I’d felt the smallest tremble when he’d touched my cheek just now, and I could see how nervous he was. “It’s not chips,” he mumbled, clearly unable to stand the silence as I processed his words, “but I thought maybe you’d like it—”

I felt a slow smile stretch my lips at that remark, and _“He remembered! Our first date! Even though I only made that comment once, and it had been a bit off-hand at the time…”_ flashed through my mind. Also the fact that I didn’t need to be “wooed”, I was already completely in love with him. But then it occurred to me that maybe…maybe this was what _he_ needed; the way the Doctor could come to terms with our unconventional relationship and perhaps allow himself to fully commit to it.

I tightened my fingers in his, ducking my head a little and feeling absurdly shy. “I…I’d like that.”

I glanced up through my lashes to catch his reaction and saw the brilliant grin that split the Doctor’s face at my words. His hand gripped mine briefly, then he led me over to the blanket and sort of stood next to it, looking as if he wasn’t sure exactly what to do now he’d gotten my consent to try this experiment.

“Um, should we sit down?” I offered, trying to diffuse the sudden tension in the air.

“Yes. Right. Sitting…” the Doctor said a little stiltedly, and he released my hand so we could both arrange ourselves on the blanket (an old plaid throw which I’d never seen before). The Doctor stretched out his long legs in front him and I drew my knees up to my chest, pulling his suit jacket tighter around my shoulders against the chill. The Doctor didn’t seem to be affected by the weather. In fact, I’d never really noticed him get ‘hot’ or ‘cold’. He wore that long coat now and again, but even when I was bundled up in a parka in the winter, or sweating from the lava flow of a volcano on the fourth moon of a planet in a galaxy three billion light years from Earth, he never so much as commented on the weather, aside from explaining how unusual and/or fascinating it was. Except when it snowed; he seemed to take an irrational delight with snow. For a long minute we simply sat there in silence, then the Doctor spoke again.

“I’m not…er…very adept at this sort of thing, Rose Tyler,” he admitted after a pause, and he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. The wind tossed my hair around my shoulders and I reached up to push an errant strand out of my face, tucking it behind my ear.

“That’s ok,” I said quietly, trying to sooth the awkwardness that seemed to cover us like a shroud. “I’m not either.”

And I wasn’t. I’d had approximately two boyfriends in my life before the Doctor: Jimmy Stone had gone about as badly as one might think—what with dropping out of school for him and then getting the brush off and all, and Mickey…well, it still hurt my heart a little to think about how that had ended. Mickey was one of the good ones. But the point was that I didn’t have a lot of experience. I might have thought the Doctor would have, considering how long he’d lived, and it wasn’t as though I wasn’t aware of his previous companions…or the fact that he’d been married once, but looking over at him, leaning back on his arms and staring up at the sky, body rigid with uneasiness, it was clear to me that we were in the same boat.

I plucked at a thread on the blanket with one hand, watching the twin moons, until the sounds of clinking glass came from off to my left and I turned my head to see what the Doctor was up to. He’d picked up the deep blue bottle and one of the champagne flutes and was holding them out in front of his chest as if unsure how to proceed.

“Would you care for a drink?” the Doctor offered, and I almost giggled at the formal tone his voice had taken. I swallowed my awkward laughter though, and gave him a little smile and polite nod.

“Sure. Thanks.”

The Doctor set the glass down between us where it bobbed awkwardly on the uneven surface before tipping over onto the blanket. The Doctor didn’t notice though, he was too preoccupied with opening the bottle. I turned toward him now, angling my knees to face him and tucking my feet under me, and realized he’d produced the sonic from somewhere (I guessed he must have removed it from his jacket before putting it on me) and was squinting down at the cork with a frown on his face. I could almost hear the thoughts going on inside his mad head as he considered the bottle before him, and I had a bad feeling about how this scenario was going to play out if I left him to it much longer. In fact, I was about to offer to go back into the TARDIS and hunt down a proper corkscrew when the sonic glowed blue and let out a buzzzz—

POP!

FIZZZZZZ!!!!

The cork shot off into the night and white foam overflowed from the bottle’s neck and over the Doctor’s hand. He let out a yelp of surprise and nearly dropped the bottle. I lunged forward to snatch the wayward glass he’d set aside away from his flailing limbs, and narrowly missed getting a champagne hair rinse as the Doctor swung the bottle back and forth in a panic.

“What? _What_?” the Doctor shouted, holding the frothing bottle with the tips of his fingers as the fizzing contents started to slow. He frowned deeply at it. “Rose, I think this bottle is broken.”

I snorted, unable to hold back my laughter any more. “It’s supposed to do that!”

The Doctor turned a half-chastened, half-wounded look on me. “People on Earth actually spend money on this booby-trapped drink? You barely get half a bottle when all’s said and done!”

The tension eased after that. I could see the Doctor’s expression settling into one of curiosity as I gently took the bottle from his hand and poured a bubbly glassful into the flute I’d rescued from the blanket. Setting it aside, I held out my hand for the second glass and he dutifully handed it over for me to fill. When I was finished I set the nearly-empty bottle (he’d been right about that part) down on the grass next to our blanket, and placed my glass next to it, frowning at my own hands.

“This stuff isn’t half sticky!” I complained, shaking my fingers in the air as if by doing so I could rid them of the half-evaporated alcohol. The champagne, for all its troubles, smelled divine though, and I couldn’t help bringing my hand to my nose to sniff at it. Gold-coloured liquid dripped off my hand and I brought a finger to my mouth to suck an errant drop off the tip—

—which was when I noticed the Doctor watching me—an odd look on his face. I flicked a confused glance between the Doctor’s expression and my finger, frowning while I tried to figure out what he was giving me a look like that for, before my brain made a merry leap to connect the two points. _Oh my god_.

My eyes grew wide in mortification and my face flushed crimson. I dropped my hand hastily and quickly turned away.  

“I—I need to wash up,” I muttered, crawling forward toward the cliff and the pool at its top. I could hear scrabbling about behind me and knew the Doctor was following. We both dunked our hands into the water, inky black in the darkness, and scrubbed hastily at our fingers and palms. The water was freezing but it did the job. When I was finished with my hands, I paused to splash a little water onto my too-hot cheeks, attempting to lessen my horrific blush, before drying my hands on my jeans and crawling back to the blanket.

I couldn’t face look at the Doctor as I sat back down again, and I snatched my flute up to swig down half the contents, not caring if it was ladylike or not. Gasping a little as bubbles assailed my throat, I swallowed hard and shook my hair out of my face, attempting to look dignified. My head spun a little from my rapid drinking and I blinked hard, attempting to clear my vision. Somewhere to my left the Doctor had returned to his place too, and was rolling the stem of his glass between long fingers, studiously not looking at me.

Oh bugger, this was more awkward than my actual first date. And that was before the unintentional innuendos. I forced myself to break the silence this time.

“This is really good.” I smiled, tipping my glass in the Doctor’s direction with a little bob in the air. “Hard to get properly aged anything on a budget in London.”

“Yes, well, the Benedictine Monks said that the 1531 was a prime year,” the Doctor said, obviously striving for nonchalance, as he drew one leg up to his chest and wrapped an arm around it. He glanced at me then and I looked down at my glass again, taking another sip and nearly emptying my glass. The bubbles from the champagne burst in cool, sweet pops over my tongue, and I was starting to feel quite sad that half the bottle had exploded into useless fizz. “This is terribly awkward for you, isn’t it?” he said after we’d lapsed into silence once again.

I looked over at the Doctor, his jacket sliding from my shoulders to land in a heap behind me. The wind blew past again, but I was feeling rather warm from the champagne by now and it didn’t bother me. The Doctor had set his still nearly-full champagne flute off to the side and was regarding me with a suspiciously blank face.

“Why would you say that?” I replied, attempting to sound casual. He’d hit the nail right on the head of course, not that I wanted to admit that to him. Because this idea, “dating”…or “courting”…or whatever, it was so sweet, and I _wanted_ that. I wanted the Doctor to pursue a relationship with me because _he_ wanted to; not simply because I’d thrown myself at him too many times to avoid.

“This isn’t easy for me either, Rose,” he added. “I’ve never done this before. On Gallifrey the whole concept of traditional courtship, according to Earth protocols, is a foreign idea.” He caught the look on my face at his words and added quickly, “Not that I’m against it. In fact, I’m rather fond of the idea. Two people have so much more time to get to know one another this way, without rushing into a union simply for the necessity of procreation.”

His cheeks appeared to darken slightly as he finished speaking, and he retrieved his glass of champagne and drank deeply, as if steadying himself to continue the conversation.

I sat for a moment, considering his words, then asked, “How does it work? On Gallifrey, I mean.”

The Doctor had been taking another swig of champagne and choked. “W-work?” he spluttered, coughing hard. “What, se—?” He cut the word off halfway through and I could practically feel the heat coming off his face as he coughed again, trying to catch his breath. “Er, much the same way as on Earth, I’d expect.” He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “We do…er…have the same parts and all…”

For a few seconds I just blinked at him, properly gob-smacked. What was he going on about? Then it clicked, and I realized which part of his comment the Doctor had thought I’d been asking about. Horrified, I could only stare as the Doctor got himself under control, setting his glass down again and rubbing his chest. When he finally allowed his gaze to return to me, I mouthed wordlessly, much like a landed fish, before my brain finally ground back into gear.

“No!” I burst out when speech returned to me, frantically trying to think of some way to fix my faux pas. “I mean, I figured it worked the same way. That is, you seemed to know what you were doing…”

  _Oh God, somebody stop me._ I was seriously considering attempting to drown myself in my champagne glass. Or throw myself over the cliff. The Doctor’s expression shifted and he raised an eyebrow at me curiously. _Abort! Abort!_

“I…um… I—I meant _this_. Dating…c-courting… whatever. When you find someone you want be with, how do you…um…pursue…”

_Please…for the love of all that’s holy, just cut in already!_

The Doctor’s expression changed from shocked to confused to understanding, and he cleared his throat. “Oh. Right. Of course.”

I downed the last of my glass in one go, my head spinning pleasantly now, and covered my face with my hands. This was officially a disaster.

“Welllll…” The familiar drawn-out word pulled me out of my pit of humiliation and back into the present. I peeked through my fingers and found the Doctor leaning back on his arms again, gaze on the sky. “Finding a mate, that is, a partner, isn’t such a base-romantic process as it appears to be on Earth, at least as it’s been during the last century or so. The closest comparison would probably be something akin to arranged marriage. Once a child reaches maturity, about age seventeen in your years, their parents begin to seek out a potential match. They consult the Elders, who, once several possible partners have been selected, contact the parents of the child—er, teenager I suppose you’d say, though we don’t really have such terms on Gallifrey—and a meeting is arranged.

For example, a girl might be brought to the Meeting Hall with four possible matches waiting for her. She’d sit on a pillow in the middle of the empty room and one by one each boy would join her, sitting on the pillow opposite. She holds out her hands and he takes them, and they both wait to see if a Connection is made.”

I cocked my head at the Doctor curiously. He’d made this whole speech to the stars, allowing me time to compose myself, and I found myself completely enthralled in the story. “What do you mean, ‘a connection’?” I asked, confused. “Like, do they think they’ll get along?”

The Doctor turned his head slightly to give me a lopsided grin. “One might say that,” he allowed, “But strictly speaking, no. I meant a mental connection. Time Lords and Ladies are telepathic on a basic level, and the stronger the mental connection felt when meeting a future mate the more likely that union will be to produce psychically strong offspring.”

I frowned at him. Offspring? “But they’re so young!” I protested. “You’re not telling me that your culture is one of those that has the girls popping out babies as soon as they’re able, are you?”

Amusement flickered in the Doctor’s eyes at that. “No, Rose Tyler, we have far more respect for our females than that. Babies don’t come until much later. This meeting is simply preparation for the future.”

“Oh.” I found myself sitting up now, leaning toward him as he spoke. “Sorry.”

He smiled slightly, and continued. “Each young man has been screened by the Elders as the best possible match for the girl,” he recapped, “and she must sit with all of them, opening her mind to his and allowing him to see into her. The whole process is very…” He paused, seeming to search for the right word. “…intimate.” he said at last, eyes back on the sky again.

I was barely breathing now, and I said nothing to this, not wanting to interrupt the Doctor’s train of thought. After a few heartbeats he picked up the thread again.

“Imagine, Rose, allowing someone to see your innermost thoughts, all that you kept secret and hidden from the world. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears…your desires…” He seemed to stumble over that last word, but I stoically pretended not to notice. “You must allow your potential partner complete freedom into the darkest places of your mind, and if their mind is strong enough, if they mesh properly with you, then a Connection is made.”

My heart was beating fast now. I couldn’t imagine letting someone know _all_ my secrets, maybe not even the Doctor. What could it be like, having all privacy stripped away, baring your naked soul to another person?

My thoughts must have shown on my face, lost in them as I was, and I jumped a little when I felt the Doctor’s hand cover my own. He held my worried eyes with his and gave me a reassuring smile, eyes glittering in the night.

“It’s not like that, Rose,” he said quietly, and I pulled myself from of the horror of my imaginings to look at him.

“B-but…” I couldn’t even form the words; I was too aghast. The Doctor ran his thumb over my fingers and the look on his face turned almost wistful.

“It’s not invasive,” he said, and his voice was serious, trying to get me to understand. “If the girl doesn’t feel completely safe with the boy she’s attempting a Connection with then it won’t work. He’ll be locked out. No one can access another person’s mind on Gallifrey without their express permission. It’s sort of a natural defense mechanism.” he added soothingly. “I know what you’re thinking, Rose, how you’d feel if someone just jumped in and started rifling through your every thought and memory like so much public property; and it’s not like that. The process is controlled, and exceedingly gentle.”

I swallowed hard, feeling myself trembling slightly as I thought about the Connection Ceremony. “What happens when she makes a connection?” I asked at last, a little breathless.

“When a Connection is made both parties feel it,” the Doctor began again. “Here,” and he gently brushed his fingers across my temple—my mind flew back to the Acuite Sanctuary, and the way he’d inspected my head there—“and here.” He placed his palm over my heart. I could feel it start to trip along a little faster at his touch.

“So what happens after?” I whispered, barely breathing now, so afraid that I might shatter this fragile moment. “They’re matched up, so then what?”

“I suppose…a little like…what we’re doing now,” the Doctor replied, his voice slightly uneven, and I began to suspect that he may be a little distracted. “They spend time together getting to know one another, chaperoned of course, until they reach adulthood at age twenty. After which the Binding Ceremony takes place and they are formally mated for life.”

I wanted to ask him what the Binding Ceremony entailed, but I couldn’t get the words out. I was trapped in his dark eyes, my chest rising and falling rhythmically under the Doctor’s hand. He seemed to be lost in the moment too, and I barely noticed his other arm come up and slid around me as he eased me down onto the blanket.

The grass was thick, and made a decent cushion beneath the flannel blanket under my back. The Doctor leaned over me, eyes distant, mind caught in a web of memory, and for an eternal moment we just stayed that way, me staring up into the Doctor’s eyes, him gazing down at me…his head slowly lowering toward mine…

“That’s pretty…” I mumbled, quite without meaning to, and the Doctor blinked, pulling up short only inches from my face.

“Er, what is?” he asked, brow wrinkling in confusion, and I garnered he was under the impression I’d been talking about him. I hurried to explain.

“The stars, Doctor,” I gestured vaguely with one hand, finding my arm surprisingly difficult to lift off the blanket; when had my body become so heavy? “They’re spinning in the sky. It’s beautiful…” My words trailed off in a bit of a slur as I stared at the pinwheels of silver cartwheeling across the sky beyond the Doctor’s head. The ground, oddly, felt a bit like it was spinning too, and I was found that I was relieved to already be lying down. My eyes drifted closed for a moment…

…and I heard the Doctor mutter something unintelligible, though undoubtedly profane, under his breath. Seconds later his arms were sliding around me again, though this time one went around my back and the other under my knees. Moments later he grunted, pulling my strangely uncoordinated body against his chest as he rose to his feet. My head lolled against the Doctor’s shoulder as he turned back toward the TARDIS, and I mumbled “Where…we…going?”, my voice coming out strangely thick.

The Doctor crossed the grass in a few long strides and awkwardly snapped his fingers at the doors, which sprang open before us. As he carried me inside, his muttered words floated through the haze that clouded my consciousness. “…should have realized…potent…what was I thinking? …over four hundred years old…naturally…couldn’t handle it…”

I must have faded out for a minute, because the next then I was aware of was being laid down on something quite a bit softer than the grass had been. Oh, I was on my bed. Why was I on my bed?

I struggled to keep my eyes open as the Doctor gently eased my head off his arm and onto my pillow, it lolled sideways and I blinked hard, trying to focus on the Doctor’s blurring face. I caught his hand quite by chance, flailing my arm blindly through the air, and clamped my fingers around his wrist. I was starting to feel scared.

“Doctor,” I slurred again, panic lacing my voice now. _Why was the room tilting like that?_ “What’s going on?” My voice hitched as fear overrode confusion. I felt tears sting my eyes as I tried to sit up again and flopped back onto my pillows like a rag doll. “Doctor!”

My bed creaked a little as the Doctor sat beside me, catching my wrists and gently pushing my hands back down onto my stomach. He looked terrible, face flushed, hair sticking up. My heart beat even faster. I’d just opened my mouth to beg him again for an explanation when he spoke. “Calm down, Rose Tyler, you’re quite alright. At least, you will be…once you sleep it off…” He muttered the last bit under his breath and I frowned up at him.

“What…are you…talking about?” I demanded, frustrated that getting that single sentence out had taken so much concentration. The Doctor’s expression became somewhat guilty.

“The…er…champagne…” he started, shoving a hand through his hair and looking utterly wretched. “You remember how I mentioned the Benedictine Monks? Well, the bottle we drank from was one of the first ever made by them…in 1531, as I said.”

I stared confusedly up at the Doctor, suddenly feeling extremely warm and wanting to either drink a huge glass of water or employ a personal army of fan-carriers. I pulled at my top, trying to cool down. “…’s hot, Doctor…”

He frowned, catching my hands again as I started tugging up the hem of my tank top, and folding his fingers around them to make me stop trying to remove my clothing. “Stop that, Rose.” I pouted up at him and he sighed heavily. “The fact of the matter is, that bottle of champagne was over 400 years old, and, as such, the alcohol concentration was extremely potent, a fact which I was remiss to neglect when giving it to a human to consume. Most forms of alcohol cycle out of my system so quickly I barely feel them, and so I mistakenly forgot to warn you and…well…”

My eyelids fluttered. I suddenly felt very sleepy. “You got me drunk.” I tried to say in an accusing tone, meaning to tease him, but my brain was already well on its way to dreamland and all that came out was a garbled mumble.

I felt the Doctor release my hands and gently stroke my cheek and forehead with the back of his hand. His cool fingers felt good against my overheated skin and I mumbled my incoherent appreciation.

“I’m leaving you water next to your bed,” I heard him say, though my eyelids were now firmly closed. “Drink all of it when you wake up.”

“Hmmm…” I agreed; sleep pulling me under into oblivion like sliding beneath the surface of a lake. Silence pressed in on all sides.

“This has got to be the worst second ‘first date’ in the history of time…” I thought I heard the Doctor mutter petulantly as his footsteps receded toward my bedroom door.

I wanted to disagree, to contradict him and tell him that, despite all the awkward moments, I’d had fun tonight. I’d been really interested in the manner in which Gallifreyans found life partners and had so many more questions about how his life had worked while living there. I wanted to tell him that he’d been wonderful, and I was so grateful that he’d tried so hard to make me feel at ease around him again, after that humiliating bedroom seduction-gone-wrong. But sleep had me in its warm embrace, and I couldn’t find my way back to consciousness.

**~OOO~**

**Poor Doctor, did you mess it up again? And you worked so hard to make the whole night special! *shakes head sadly* Guess you’ll have to work harder next time! *wants to sit and look at the stars with the Doctor herself***

**Reviewer thank-you time! It’s like Christmas every day that I see a “New Story Review” e-mail pop up…you do that, dear readers, remember that. You’re responsible for my happiness. And the happier I am, the more I write! ;)**


	11. Chapter 11

**Wow! Two chapters in less than two weeks? What is this madness? Brave heart, Whovians! The Doctor can’t continue to mess things up forever, now can he? Well, can he??**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 11 -

                There was a steamroller driving over my face. Or possibly a troupe of little people dancing the Conga on my brain. Either possibility seemed plausible considering the type of mind-numbing headache that was crushing all will to live from my very marrow. With a groan I rolled over, and in the process tangled myself in my blankets and fell out of bed. I hit the ground with a shriek and an equally loud thud just as the door to my rom opened and footsteps sounded across the floor.

            “Rose?” came a concerned male voice, as the footsteps halted and a mix of clinks and clatters permeated the air. I clawed my way free of the linens, a mess of flailing limbs and wild hair, and shoved my head back into the open air. Squinting in the dim light at the person in the doorway, I frowned, confused.  

“Doctor?” I responded sluggishly, and the footsteps started up again.

“How are you feeling?” the Doctor asked cautiously, moving toward me as I sat up. I pulled my blankets around my shoulders and rubbed my eyes.

“Like I went a on a week-long bender with Shareen and let her talk me into a drinking contest that I spectacularly lost.”

There was a clatter of dishes as the Doctor set a tray down on my bedside table before turning to look at me still curled up on the floor. “Er, yes, about that…” he trailed off, looking as if he’d really rather be anywhere else right now. “I’ve brought you a tisane to help take the edge off…er…”

“The hangover from hell?” I quipped, managing to get to my feet without falling over and feeling quite proud of myself. The Doctor flinched at that but I didn’t notice, as I was currently holding a hand out, gesturing blindly for the concoction. “Let’s have it, Doctor. I’ll do just about anything to get rid of the pounding in my head.”

A mug was placed in my groping hand and I brought it to my lips, inhaling the steam wafting from the top. It smelled very good, surprisingly, and I took a small sip. Then a longer one, as the taste of whatever was in the mug hit my tongue. Before I knew it, I was tipping the mug forward and drinking deeply. Somewhere to my right the Doctor eyed me, waiting.

It didn’t take long; whatever he’d given me worked fast. My headache receded and my vision blinked into proper focus. In fact, I was starting to feel very refreshed. Once I got a hot shower and some coffee I thought I might even feel properly human again.

“Woah…you could bottle that stuff and make a killing off the eighteen to thirty crowd, Doctor.” I grinned at him, pushing my hair back and flopping backward onto the bed. “Remind me never to have a drinking contest with you.”

The Doctor’s face appeared over me after a moment, as he bent over the bed and frowned down at me laying there unmoving, enjoying the freeing feeling of a jackhammer-free head.

“Rose?”

“Hmmm?”

“You’re not upset?”

“About last night?” I asked, eyes closing as I sighed contentedly. “Why would I be upset? You only got me completely sloshed with the intent to have your way with me under the stars…for all your talk of taking things slow, Doctor, you’re really a rogue, aren’t you?”

My eyes fluttered open again just in time to appreciate the priceless look on the Doctor’s face. In fact, I was a little startled at my comment myself. I might have made this sort of sarcastic remark to Mickey once, but with the Doctor?? His normally pale skin had turned an interesting shade of magenta and his brown eyes bugged out impressively. He nearly toppled over onto the bed in surprise, but caught himself, obviously thinking that that move would only get him in worse trouble.

“I—I would _never_ …you must believe me, Rose Tyler, I—…it was completely accidental...really…I would never take advantage—”

He looked so utterly petrified at the idea that I could think he’d ever stoop so low, especially considering the way our night had started out, that I took pity on him, sitting up and catching at his hand as he babbled next to the bed. He stopped spluttering at my touch and I used the moment to stand up. Our bodies were suddenly very close.

The Doctor went still at once, staring down at me. I was still wearing my clothes from yesterday, aside from my shoes, which had come off some time in the night, and I felt rumpled and unkempt, but I wound my fingers through the Doctor’s own and smiled up at him. His face remained anxious.

“Of course you wouldn’t, Doctor,” I said soothingly, realizing my teasing had been taken the wrong way. “I’m sorry. I was just teasing you.”

He still looked unsure. “You’re really not mad?”

I felt the faintest flush creep over my cheeks, just enough to remind me of how I’d felt when the Doctor had pointed out the two Gallifreyan spots of Connection on my body…to say nothing of the way he’d laid me down on the blanket under the star-studded sky—before my traitorous body had had a nasty reaction to our drink. Idiot monks. Weren’t monasteries supposed to keep away from such worldly things as alcohol?

 “Doctor, last night was…really sweet.” He grinned then, the smile stretching slowly across his face until even his eyes lit up. “I had a really nice time.” I added, ducking my head a little and brushing a lock of hair behind my ear as an excuse to look away. This was a new sort of feeling, this shyness. But not a bad one. Because I knew now that the Doctor was willing to give _us_ a solid try, and seeing the tenderness in his eyes made me tingle all over.

“Did you really?” The question came out with such unexpected vulnerability that I had to look at him again. He was still smiling down at me, but he’d reigned in the expression and I could see the uncertainty in his eyes.

I pressed one hand against his chest, the other playing with his tie. “I really liked hearing about life on Gallifrey, Doctor.”

I felt the Doctor’s hands come up and settle lightly on my hips. His touch was gentle, hands only there for the sake of holding me. Of being near me. I could feel the difference in this embrace and the way he’d pulled at my body yesterday, hardly able to press me close enough, and felt… special. Treasured.

The word didn’t really encompass the exact nature of being held this way, but for now it would do. I didn’t feel anything beyond sweetness in the Doctor’s hands, his fingers tracing light patterns on my sides though his palms stayed firmly still against me, and yet I was reminded of the way he had had to fight to display this side of his personality. So much of his past was steeped in darkness and despair.

“I know it’s not easy to talk about your—” I broke off, suddenly unsure. How was I supposed to finish that sentence? Home? Past? The lost arts and traditions of your now completely annihilated people?

The Doctor’s hands moved slightly higher, rubbing my back, and the incessant babble in my head paused as he spoke. “No, you’re wrong, Rose.” His voice was quiet but kind, and his warm brown eyes were shining. But there was something in his expression as he spoke that I couldn’t name. “Being able to talk to you about my home keeps the memory of it alive.” He moved one hand to frame the side of my face—something I was starting to think he did unconsciously. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to whisk you away to Gallifrey. To show you the Great Halls of Learning, the silver forests, even the Schism—at least from a distance.”

His expression grew wistful again and I raised my own hand to cover his, my palm small as it rested over the Doctor’s large hand. His smile was sad now, and I wanted do something to erase it, to bring back the sweet look that been in his eyes only moments before. I pushed up on my toes, my free hand moving to the Doctor’s other arm to steady myself, and leaned in to kiss him softly. I could feel his surprise in the way his hands tightened the smallest bit against me, but his lips didn’t need any encouragement.

The Doctor’s hand fell away from my face, dropping back down to my waist where he tugged me ever so gently closer with both hands. He met my kiss almost chastely though, as if he didn’t want to upset me by pulling away but, at the same time, was being so, so, careful about not allowing himself to lose control.

He pulled back after a moment and smiled down at me, arms still lightly around my waist. “I guess you’re feeling better then?”

“It would seem that way,” I agreed, though my lighthearted response was tainted with the Doctor’s reaction to my kiss. I had half surprised myself when I’d done it, but he’d been so careful, barely letting himself react. Was he going to be like that from now on? Overly concerned that he’d lose control and scare me off? I had known that taking the ‘slow route’ would mean that he was working to both hold back and move forward in our relationship, but how confusing must that be? I mean, he’d snogged me breathless twice now, and yet he was _still_ fighting his feelings.

What were his feelings anyway? He hadn’t said anything direct to me since I’d made my own confession of being in love with him…was he planning to simply humor me by playing at dating like some fictional boyfriend on the TV, knowing full well that he could never say the words?

Was I reading too much into this?

I was desperate to ask him; just look him in the eyes and demand of him the answer: “Yes or no, Doctor? Are you in love with me, too?” Not that I ever would. There are some things that you can’t force into being no matter how hard you try.

_Feelings are fragile, handle with care…_

I stepped away, dropping my eyes, though not missing the slight frown that crossed the Doctor’s face as I did so. He’d noticed my shift in attitude.

“I, um, could really use a shower now that I’m no longer incapacitated.” I said, striving for casualness. My smile felt a little plastic.

“Er, right. I’ll take that as my cue to leave then, shall I?” He stepped back too, and was almost to the door when I spoke again.

“Doctor?”

“Yes, Rose?” He paused and turned back as I called his name.

“Thank-you.” I was at the ensuite now, half a room away from the Doctor, and both of us paused at our respective doors. He raised an eyebrow in confusion at me.

“For what?”

“For being willing to try.” His eyebrows drew together and I could sense a speech coming, so I pressed on before he could interrupt. “I know that a big part of you doesn’t want to even attempt this….this…whatever we have…I mean, it’s not like I don’t how you live, and how you age, and how I do.” He was silent, watching me with a closed expression as I reiterated back to him things he’d said to me in the past. I went on. “I know that your entire nature is saying that attempting a relationship with a human—with me—is completely absurd. Not to mention that pursing a girl like this has got to feel strange and unnecessary, and just plain odd. I mean, your people do things such a different way.”

I paused, trying to organize my thoughts. I hadn’t meant to get into such a speech right now. It was just that after learning how he was used to doing things—how he had to have _personally_ experienced a matching this way so many years ago, I needed the Doctor to know that I didn’t discount his traditions as being worth less than my human ones, now that I knew about them. I wasn’t trying to be self-deprecating, or fishing for compliments about why _I_ was so worth the Doctor making such a radical life change, and I hoped he wouldn’t see it that way. Frustrated, I bit my lip, trying to make my thoughts come out right.

“What I’m trying to say is that I really appreciate your trying to do things the way I’m used to, even though it’s strange for you. I know that I’m being selfish, and I’m sorry. And…and…I’m sorry I messed up our date…especially considering earlier…” I trailed off, feeling my cheeks heat up again; I had the world’s worst poker face. I still felt horribly embarrassed about that turn of events.

The Doctor hadn’t moved from the doorway during my rambling, and he stood there still, hands in his pockets and a tender smile on his face. Seeing that smile…words left me.

“Rose,” he said fondly, not making any move to toward me, just looking at me in such a way that caused me to feel warm all over. “Don’t you know by now that there is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you?”

“But—” I started, but he gave a small shake of the head, his gentle smile fading into seriousness, and I broke off again, waiting for him to speak.

“I’ll concede that this experience is new for me, but it’s not in any way unpleasant. Confusing at times? Yes. Different than I’m used to? Naturally. But it was my choice to take things between us this way and I haven’t regretted it. If anyone was selfish in this whole scenario, it was me. _Of course_ you’d need to do things in a different way than I’ve done them. _Of course_ understanding different traditions will be a learning experience for me, but why should I begrudge you that?”

I hovered anxiously next to the bathroom door as the Doctor talked, feeling both reassured and more uneasy. “Please don’t misunderstand, Doctor,” I began, as soon as I was sure he was done talking. “I meant what I said last night. And despite both of us being about as awkward about this whole thing as a pair of fourteen year olds with their first crush, I’m really happy that you’re willing to try things my way. But think about it; is it really fair for _you_ to be the only one to making all the adjustments? Isn’t there anything that I can do to make this easier for _you_? Why should I begrudge _you_ that?” I threw his own words back at him but they didn’t seem to have any effect on the Doctor. His tender expression returned and he smiled gently again.

“Just continue to be exactly who you are, Rose. That’s all I’d ever ask of you.” And he turned and walked out of the room.

**~OOO~**

I stared after him for a long moment, listening to the Doctor’s footsteps recede down the hall, thinking about how I felt about his words. At first pass they were incredibly sweet and generous, but at second glance they almost annoyed me. I didn’t want to be gliding along on a free ride while the Doctor did all the work, trying to make me comfortable while he struggled against an impossible life choice. I wanted to be equal partners in this relationship, though I really didn’t know how to go about achieving that.

I stayed in the shower a long time, the hot water soothing my tired muscles, thinking about the Doctor and the way he was used to relationships working. By the time the water started to cool I’d made a decision. Turning off the water I toweled off and blow-dried my hair, thinking through my new plan, then I dressed in black pants and a sleeveless blouse and left my room in search of the Doctor.

The TARDIS led me to the small sitting room again. I hadn’t been in there since the Doctor had picked me up in Hyde Park, and I could see the Doctor casually sprawled across the loveseat scribbling on something resting against his knee. He looked up when I came in, the fire behind his head making his face and hair a study in ebony and gold. He smiled as I walked toward him, tucking whatever he’d been writing on into an inner pocket of his jacket and leaning back against the armrest.

“Hi...” The word came out a little awkwardly, and I hovered next to the fireplace, unsure. I wanted to talk to him, to try and explain again how I wished he would tell me exactly what I could do to make this relationship less scary for him. The Doctor had been pretty much the storybook prince when it came to making sure that _I_ was feeling safe and protected and comfortable with him. He’d worked so hard…bringing me home to my mother when he’d been afraid of accidentally taking advantage of me; being willing to surrender everything he knew about relationships in favor of a drawn-out and completely foreign method; held himself back when I hadn’t been ready to take our physical relationship to the next level, and not judged me at all for leading him on and then forcing him to back right off again… Wasn’t there something I could do to show him that I wasn’t just a “taker” in this relationship, such as it was?

I knew that I was in love with the Doctor. I also knew that I would do anything to stay with him. But the most important thing I’d come to realize these past few weeks was that I needed him to feel the same way, or else this thing between us would never work.

The Doctor remained causally sprawled on the couch as these thoughts drifted through my mind, but he shifted his legs to the side to make room for me.

“Hello,” he answered, his reply chased with a cheerful grin, and I moved to sit on the empty edge of the sofa, my brain still whirring with the complexities of love.

“What were you writing?” I asked curiously, trying to distract myself. This small sitting room, barely large enough for its few pieces of furniture and the fireplace, pressed in on me. It felt saturated in emotion.

The Doctor’s grin turned a little cheeky. “That’s none of your concern.”

I frowned a little, eying the place in his jacket where I’d seen the paper whisked away. “That’s not very forthcoming of you, Doctor.”

His grin widened into a full-blown smirk. “Right you are, Miss Tyler. Very much so.”

I gave him a _look_. One that said, “You expect me to just let it go? Do you even know me at all?” I mean, really? He should know by now that I wasn’t the sort of person who was deterred so easily. The Doctor says “Don’t wonder off!” and I automatically want to go exploring. Therefore, when he says “You can’t look at this,” everything in me has to know what he’s hiding.

“Not even a little hint?” I wheedled, pouting at him from where I was curled at the opposite side of the loveseat.

He wasn’t moved.  

While the Doctor continued to lounge languidly against the armrest, I considered a new plan of attack. In the background the fire hissed and popped in the grate, and the Doctor folded his arms behind his head, eyes slitted; he looked like he was falling asleep. I wondered briefly if he’d gotten much rest last night, or if he’d stayed up agonizing over getting me completely laggered, even if it had been accidental. An idea came to me then, and slow grin unfurled on my lips, my eyes sparking with the firelight. Without warning, I seized my advantage and lunged at the Doctor, springing off my end of the small couch and leaping at his chest, my right hand shooting forward with the intent of slipping inside his jacket before he realized what was happening.

The Doctor moved so fast I couldn’t even get out a gasp of surprise. I hadn’t even made contact with his jacket before his brown eyes snapped open and his arms flew up, pulling me against his chest and rolling my body under his onto the couch cushions in a single, fluid motion. My heart rate picked up as I stared up into the Doctor’s eyes. They looked black in the dim lighting, and he had a considering look on his face.

“Really, Rose, trying to get the drop on a Lord of Time?” The smirk was back on his lips and I twitched against his restraining hands, the Doctor having pinned my wrists to the couch on either side of my head. “Tiny bit psychic, remember?”

 “Again with the cheating!” I cried in protest, both feeling and sounding a little breathless. Did he have any idea what it did to me every time he bent over me this way? I strained against the Doctor’s grip again, but he was unyielding. Since I couldn’t get free, I settled for sticking my tongue out at him instead, and then felt my heart stutter at the look of hunger that flashed in the Doctor’s dark eyes. He shifted over me, one foot on the floor, one knee pressing into the couch between my legs. His eyes had moved to my mouth. Swallowing hard, I attempted a disdainful glare. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you to share?”

His smirk deepened. “Certain things,” he acknowledged, moving one of his thumbs over the sensitive flesh on the inside of my wrist, a barely-there gesture that sent a shiver through my body from head to toes. “Didn’t Jackie ever teach you that some things are private?” the Doctor continued pleasantly, leaning closer to me. I could _hear_ my breathing speed up as he continued to stroke my wrist, making no other move to touch me, and the look on the Doctor’s face told me that he was more than aware of this.

“Secrets only cause gossip and confusion.” I retorted in an impressively normal-sounding tone of voice. The Doctor’s eyes crinkled and he lowered his head so that his lips were right by my ear. His warm breath tickled my neck and I shivered again, feeling goose bumps break out over my arms.

“I think,” he said in a low voice, “after so many years, my reputation is pretty much established, Rose. Any gossip added to the rumor mill at this point can’t really make things much worse.”

Again he didn’t touch me, didn’t press his lips to my throat, or move any other part of his body other than that deliciously distracting thumb over my wrist. But having the Doctor’s breath continue to waft gently against my skin was doing things to my heart, not to mention the rest of my body, and I felt my breathing hitch the tiniest bit. As if somehow satisfied, the Doctor pulled back to look down at me again.

“W-well,” I said shakily, losing the battle to keep my voice steady due to the way he was gazing me. My stomach squirmed in anticipation and I swallowed hard, running my tongue over my dry lips and trying to order my thoughts—they had scattered like a deck of cards. “If you…um…” Damn it, I couldn’t think straight with the Doctor looking at me with that little smile on his lips. “…I mean…y-you…”

“If I what?” he pressed, amusement dancing in his eyes now. His lips quirked then and I found my eyes drawn to them. I abruptly wanted him to kiss me. Now.

“If you weren’t so—so secretive all the time, maybe your reputation wouldn’t be so inflated.” I said quickly, and the Doctor paused in his teasing decent toward me, his expression appearing caught somewhere in the middle of ‘surprised’ and ‘offended’. He recovered quickly, the smile on his face turning almost…predatory.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he conceded, speaking slowly now. “I’ll have to try and be clearer in future. Can you tell what I’m thinking now, or do I need to be more direct?”

The heat in the Doctor’s eyes was almost palpable. If he didn’t kiss me soon I didn’t know what I would do. Screw the slow path; forget whether or not he could say three little words to me. In this moment all I wanted was his mouth on mine.

And that thought scared me. I’d never felt this passionately about anyone in my entire life. As if my essence and his were so entwined that I needed to be touching him in order to breathe, to feel. To exist.

I was so desperate for the Doctor in this moment that I nearly let out a cry of frustration over his continual refusal to touch more than my wrists. At the same time, I wanted to push him off me and retreat to my room, locking the door against him. The overwhelming power of desire and emotion and _need_ terrified me, and it pressed me down against the couch as surely as the Doctor’s hands did. I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe.

My conflicting emotions must have shown on my face because the Doctor’s intense expression faded, his lips tightening and his fingers around my wrists slackening. I felt him pulling away, probably reminding himself of his promise to “court me”, to take things slowly and not scare me off by letting himself give in to his passions so easily, and I reacted without thinking, surprising myself probably as much as him.

The moment my wrists were free my hands shot up like they’d been released from a spring. I grabbed the Doctor’s head, pulling him back toward me, and when I could finally reach his lips my kiss was more than a little wild and I let out a small moan of satisfaction. Over me, I could sense the Doctor’s body stiffen, feel his hands flailing a little as I yanked him off balance. One hand landed on the armrest where he’d been leaning earlier, and the other clamped onto the back of the couch as he fought not to crash on top of me. A small part of my mind was shouting that it really wasn’t fair to be giving the poor man such mixed signals, but I ignored this and moved my hands to slide my fingers into the Doctor’s hair, grazing his temples as I went. The Doctor let out a sound of his own then, and I felt him start to respond to my invitation.

 His mouth abruptly pressed hotly against mine, and he moved the hand clenching the top of the couch to slide it under my back, pulling my body tighter against his. As the Doctor’s kisses became more aggressive, I felt his other hand trail restlessly up and down my thigh, as if he wanted to grab my leg and pull it up against his body but was forcing restraint. In the end he settled for gripping my hip with strong fingers and tightening the arm around my back.

I felt dizzy now, and my whole body felt hot all over from the Doctor’s touch. He was kissing me with an intensity that bordered on desperate and I almost didn’t care. When he plunged his tongue into my mouth with a low sort of growl I let out a small whimper, my nails digging into his shoulders as I pushed closer.

Quit by accident I found one of my hands caught between the Doctor’s chest and my own as he dragged his mouth from mine to press his lips against the racing pulse in my throat, and under my fingers I felt something flat and slightly raised making a bump beneath the Doctor’s jacket. My hazy mind dimly recalled the paper he’d hidden from me earlier, and before I could talk myself out of it, I slid my hand toward the jacket’s lapel, then darted my fingers underneath. I’d just started to tug the mysterious note free when long fingers clamped around my wrist and yanked my hand back into the open air. I let out a startled cry and my eyes flew up to the Doctor’s face.

He was breathing hard, cheeks slightly red, but he narrowed his eyes at me. “Wellll… look at you, clever clocks,” he growled, my trapped wrist now pinned against his heaving chest. The Doctor’s grip was gentle but firm, and I knew that there was no way I could pull free unless he allowed it. I swallowed hard at the look in his eyes, my whole body trembling beneath him, a mix of nerves, guilt, and want. He seemed to realize then that I was under the impression that he was angry with me, and a slow smile unfurled on his lips. He released my wrist and I retracted it instantly, curling it against my own chest so that he would know I wasn’t planning any rash second attempts. He moved his hand to cup the side of my face instead. “That was terribly unfair of you, you know,” he said after another long moment, during which the Doctor stroked the side of my face with his thumb and we both struggled to catch our breath. His voice was chastising but that teasing smile was still on his lips. “However, high marks for deviousness, Rose Tyler, I never would have expected it of you.”

“I—I didn’t…” I panted, trying to get enough air to make my excuses. “I wasn’t planning to—” And I really hadn’t _intended_ to distract the Doctor by snogging him so I could sneak a peek at whatever he was hidding, though in retrospect that probably would have been, and sort of had been, a brilliant plan. But I could see in his eyes that despite the truth in my denial he didn’t believe me. Maybe this was payback for the line I’d used on him earlier. Fine. Whatever. Let him think I could be that bold. Maybe one day I would be. For now, having been the one to make the first move toward a simple snog was gutsy enough for me.

The Doctor sat up carefully, his knee still balancing awkwardly on the cushion between my thighs, and lifted his hands to tuck the thick, cream-coloured paper back into his jacket. He’d just proffered a hand to pull me up, his cheeky grin back in place, when I saw his eyes go suddenly very wide and the smile slid off his face like water. In fact, his whole body went rigid and I thought for one heart-stopping moment that he was having a heart attack.

“Doctor?” I said sharply, ignoring his frozen hand and shoving myself awkwardly into a sitting position. He blinked, coming back to himself, and looked down at me, his expression shaken. “What is it?” I demanded, feeling a cold chill sweep over me.

He looked stunned. No, not quite that. He had that expression that comes with the feeling of having the world drop away from you unexpectedly; like when you miss the last step on a set of stairs and you’re so startled at the lack of solid ground beneath your feet that you literally can’t even process how to react, you just lock up.

Slowly, as if on autopilot, the Doctor got to his feet, his hand moving back to his suit jacket. For a moment I thought he was going to pull out the secret writing we’d been play-fighting over, but he didn’t. Instead he removed a small, black leather flip-book and opened it with visibly shaking hands. He scanned the psychic paper briefly then lifted his eyes to stare at me.

“What does it say?” I asked quietly, all traces of romance, heat, and passion gone from the room now. I held my breath, waiting for the Doctor to answer. He glanced back down at the paper once more, as if checking that he’d read the message correctly, and when he spoke his voice came out in a choked sort of whisper.

“Come,” he said hoarsely. “Please come. Hurry.”

For an infinite moment we both just stared at one another, shock and horror mirrored in both our eyes. I’d completely forgotten about the message the Doctor had sent out via the psychic paper. I’d all but entirely repressed the Acumen and the danger lurking outside the TARDIS, liable to strike at any given moment. I’d been so wrapped up in my own personal emotional drama that I’d given no thought at all to the worries the Doctor had to have been dealing with alongside me all this time. Talk about being selfish.

I stood up, feeling shaky, and clenched my hands into fists at my sides to try and hide my fear. I knew what this message meant, what the Doctor was going to do.

“When do we leave?” I asked, forcing a calm I did not feel. The Doctor blinked at me, uncomprehending. He looked a little green, and I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t try and get him to sit down for a minute. “We’re going after him right? Can the TARDIS find that rock in the middle of nowhere again?”

The Doctor shook his head a little, as if to clear it, and finally really looked at me. “Rose…” he said haltingly, and I stopped talking to put a hand on his arm.

“I know.” My voice was quiet, and for a moment we just looked at each other. I could feel the Doctor drawing strength from my steadiness resolved to remain strong for him.

He swallowed hard. “You don’t have to come…” he began, but for once there was no real conviction in the Doctor’s voice. I knew he’d rather drop me off in London before going after the captured Time Lord, or, failing that option, convince me to stay in the TARDIS, but in this moment it was so very obvious that he didn’t want to be alone and he was fighting his every instinct to do the noble thing and try and keep me out of harm’s way, that there really was no question what my answer would be.

“I know.” I repeated, my voice firm and unwavering. “But I will anyway.”

Relief warred with worry in the Doctor’s eyes, but he nodded slowly. “Right.” He nodded again, turning toward the hallway in a bit of a daze. “Right,” he repeated, and squared his shoulders. When he reached the door he turned back to look at me, and found me right on his heels. He met my eyes, the expression on his face more serious than I’d ever seen it. “Rose, when we get there you have to promise me something, and you have to mean it. Otherwise I’ll take you back to Jackie _right now_ and I’ll leave you there. Swear to me, Rose!”

“W-what is it, Doctor?” I asked, starting to feel my resolve crack at the intensity of his demand.

The Doctor took hold of my forearms, gripping them almost painfully, and bent his head so that he could look me straight in the eyes. “Please, _please_ , promise me that you won’t wonder off!”

I blinked at him, already having had no desire to break his number one rule with the Acuites this go around. “Doctor…”

            His fingers around my arms tightened, though I don’t think he realized, and I saw a sort of desperation in his eyes that I hadn’t seen there before. “Rose, _please_!”

            “Alright!” I said quickly, starting to feel a bit frightened at the look in the Doctor’s eyes. “I promise. Really promise. Ok, Doctor?”

            He held my eyes for a long minute, judging the sincerity of my words. He must have decided that I was telling the truth though, because he released my arms and took a step back, moving purposefully into the hallway.

I stood in the tiny sitting room for a moment, the fire still crackling cheerily behind me, and took a shaky breath, steeling myself for what was to come. Then I turned and followed the Doctor into the hall, falling into step with him as he headed for the console room. As we drew near, I slipped my hand into his and gave his fingers a squeeze, my eyes straight ahead.

            “ _Allons-y_.”

**~OOO~**

**So….who will admit to being like Rose and forgetting all about the Acumen in the midst of all the lovey-dovey drama? ;) Well the Big Bad is Back and shiz just got real!**

**REVIEW!! Please?**

**Brit Tip: Laggered** **– “drunk”, London slang; at least according to the internet. If any actual British people read this fic, I apologize profusely for my attempt to throw in “British” words and/or slang. If it sounds very unnatural please PM me and suggest a better way to phrase things. I’d greatly appreciate it! :)**


	12. Chapter 12

**Aaaaand action! About time we got back to the baddies, don’tcha think? Hold on to the TARDIS, Whovians, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 12 -

                We entered the console room at a steady pace and the Doctor didn’t let go of my hand the entire walk there. In fact, his fingers had tightened almost painfully around mine, though his outward expression remained serious and calm. When we reached the ramp up to the console proper the Doctor finally released my hand and I had to resist the urge to massage my fingers. Instead, I hovered nearby, watching as he strode up to the desktop and began pushing buttons at an almost frenzied pace.

The Doctor pressed a few keys on a central grid, shoved a lever up with a swooshing sound that ended in an electronic bleep, and finally turned to look over his shoulder at me as the TARDIS gave an almighty shudder and lurched forward into the Vortex.

            “No turning back now, Rose Tyler…” he said, his voice somewhat bleak. The Doctor had a determined look on his face, but there was something of the solider off to a battle he was fairly certain he wasn’t coming back from about his features.

            I hooked my thumbs in my belt loops and leaned back against the railing, doing my best to balance as the TARDIS shot through the air, bouncing about like a broken carnival ride. “No guts, no glory, right, Doctor?” I tried for a teasing grin, but the atmosphere in the room was too tense and my expression probably resembled more of a grimace. “You’re sure the TARDIS can find her way back? I mean, we didn’t land on purpose last time…”

            The TARDIS lurched again and the Doctor turned back to inspect a readout on a monitor and kick a lever with his foot before answering. When he faced me again his expression had lightened significantly and he grinned at me, though the expression looked strained and didn’t last long. “The TARDIS can find anything, anywhere, any _when_ ,” the Doctor informed me, giving his ship an affectionate pat, and I felt a faint hum zing through me, almost as if the TARDIS were purring. “The question isn’t _if_ we can get there, Rose Tyler, it’s what we’ll find there when we arrive.”

            The Doctor’s eyes were so bright he looked almost manic, and I felt the stirrings of unease press at my thoughts once again. He was obviously making an effort not to look afraid, but I’d not forgotten the look in his eyes back in the Acuite Sanctuary, the desperate, pleading, shock as he willed the site before him not to exist. I knew how very much he did not want to return there, and it was a testament to the kind of man he was that the Doctor would risk so much on the off-chance that a Time Lord _might_ be trapped somewhere within the mountain.

            “Well, I can tell you something,” I said decisively, taking a deep breath as the Doctor raised an eyebrow at me in question. “Whoever it is won’t be expecting us, right? This time we’re arriving on our own terms, and we’ll be going in knowing exactly who the Acuites are and what they want. We’ll just park, nip in and scout the place—possibly making a grand rescue while we’re there—and then zip off again, courtesy of TARDIS Airlines. No muss, no fuss.” I gave the Doctor a saucy grin and winked at him, hoping to draw out a smile.

            “Oh Rose Tyler,” he sighed, melancholy once more. “If only it were that easy.”

            The smile slid off my own face then, and I watched as the Doctor gripped the console with both hands, his long fingers turning white as he fought to suppress his anxiety. After only thirty seconds of watching him stand there, unmoving, I couldn’t hold myself back. I pushed off the railing and crossed the floor to stand next to him, gently prying one of his hands off the console dash and twining my fingers with his. He glanced at me, a look of uncertainty in his brown eyes.

            “Doctor,” I said softly. “We are going to do this. We are going to get your friend and bring him safely to the TARDIS and we’re going to do it without incident. Got that?”

            His expression didn’t change. “Rose…” he started, and I frowned at him like a teacher scolding a young pupil.

            “Got it, Doctor?” I demanded a second time, and poked him in the chest. Finally he hitched a smile onto his face.

            “Apparently what Rose Tyler wants, Rose Tyler gets,” the Doctor gave in at last, and I grinned back at him.

            “And don’t you forget it!” I admonished, fingering his tie as I leaned in a little closer.

            “You know,” the Doctor added thoughtfully, “I see a lot of your mother in you.”

            I cringed, halting the pattern I’d been idly tracing on his tie. “My mum?” It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy to have my mum’s traits, Jackie Tyler was a wonderful mother and could out-sass the best of them, but I wasn’t exactly hoping to turn this moment into a conversation about which parts of my personality most resembled hers. The Doctor seemed to realize what I was thinking and hastened to correct himself, while I eyed him with a cool look which I’d also inherited from Jackie.

            “Er…what I meant to say was you’ve successfully succeeded in proving to me once again that I’ve underestimated you, Rose Tyler.” My cool look lessened a fraction as confusion took its place. The Doctor’s expression softened and he caught my hand where I’d frozen it against his chest, wrapping his fingers around it and warming my icy skin. “You’re so much stronger than I often remember to give you credit for,” he went on. “So much steadier. You looked into the heart of the TARDIS and walked away; no one’s ever done that before, Rose. I knew then that you could handle this life, reckless though I am. You balance me.”

            I felt trapped in the Doctor’s eyes at his words. It might not have been a love confession, but having the Doctor admit that I was capable enough to stand on my own next to him wrapped me in a cocoon of happiness. Because I wanted that; I wanted it so much…to be his partner, his equal.

            “I only walked away from that because you saved me, Doctor,” I said slowly, holding his eyes with mine so he could see that it wasn’t false modesty that spurred my words. “You protected me, like you always do. And it’s because of my trust in you that I can be as strong as I am.” He was watching me closely, chest rising and falling rhythmically as I spoke. “And this trip is going to be fine. I’ll watch your back, you watch mine. The Doctor and Rose Tyler, like always, yeah?” I smiled softly up at him, holding his gaze until he smiled back, faintly, but still evident.

            “Too right, Rose Tyler,” he murmured as he pulled me closer…

            —and then the TARDIS slammed into the ground with a juddering impact that nearly knocked the both of us sideways into the console. We broke apart amid shouts of surprise and flailing limbs, our gazes swiveling to stare across the room; the moment shattered by the inevitable reality of what we faced beyond the TARDIS doors.

            The Doctor recovered first, catching his balance and then straightening his suit before turning to face me. I’d tripped during the landing and ended up in a heap on the floor. Pushing myself to my feet, I grumbled under my breath about the bruise I was sure I’d have on my left knee within the hour. I really needed to improve my landings skills—or the Doctor needed to improve his, one or the other. When I was standing again I met his eye with a fierce determination.

            “Run in, run out,” he paraphrased to me, and I forced a thin smile, giving him a mock shake of my head.

            “Always with the running…”

            The Doctor grinned, looking like the reality of adventure was finally catching up with him, and relief washed over me. He looked less afraid and more like his old self now that we were finally here again. We could do this.

He held out his hand to me, fingers splayed expectantly, and I grasped his hand firmly, meeting his eyes with a smile of my own. “Come on, Rose Tyler, we’ve got a mission to complete!” The Doctor loped across the console toward the TARDIS doors, pulling me next to him, but we both came to a stop at the exit, leaning forward and peering through the small windows at the world outside.

As he’d said, there was no turning back once we stepped out these doors…

**~OOO~**

We were inside the mountain, probably near the massive, metal doors we’d passed through on our first visit to this rock. I wondered idly if the place where the Acuites lived—or, perhaps more aptly, were hiding—had a name, and made a mental note to ask the Doctor later what it was. The hall before us looked empty, but, of course, that meant nothing. The Doctor squeezed my hand briefly then let go, withdrawing the sonic from an inside pocket of his jacket and easing open the TARDIS door with far more caution than I’d ever seen him use.

            I watched as the Doctor moved slowly out of the ship and peered around the wide stone corridor, then made my way quietly out of the TARDIS to stand next to him. He glanced at me briefly then snapped his fingers—the sound seeming magnified in the ominously silent hall—and the TARDIS closed her doors with a muted thud.

We began to make our way forward and I gestured at the numerous white hallways that branched off the main road. They were no less creepy to me on my second visit than they’d been the first time I’d been here.

“Doctor, could those be prison cells?” I whispered, trying to keep pace with his long strides as the Doctor marched down the hall, gripping the sonic tightly in his free hand. “I mean, we didn’t really have time to check them out the last time we were here.”

The Doctor followed my gaze and nodded tightly. “Could be,” he allowed, coming to a stop and pulling me up beside him. “Hard to tell if they’re in use or not, though I suppose it couldn’t hurt to take a peek.” He started to walk toward one of the halls, towing me along with him, and this time I was the one to dig my heels in and pull him up short. He paused and looked over at me, a question in his eyes.

“The thing is,” I began, already knowing that the Doctor was going to fight me on this. “It would make more sense to split u—”

“ _No_.” The word was sharp and beggared no argument. I set my face into a determined glare and stared him down.

“You know it’s more logical to split up, Doctor. We can cover more ground at a quicker pace and get out of here faster!”

The Doctor frowned deeply at me. He knew I was right, but I could see his need to keep me within sight warring with his desire to be gone from this place as quickly as possible. Finally he nodded. “One hall over only,” he commanded, looking as if he already regretted agreeing to this strategy. “Move slowly, keep quiet, and don’t touch anything! If you see someone inside one of those rooms come get me. Don’t call out, someone might hear us.”

I nodded my understanding and the pair of us split off at the next intersection, each taking a different hall. My heart rate sped up as I crept down the pristinely white corridor; I felt exposed in the bright lights. Every time I passed a door with a lit-up window I paused, pushed up on my tip toes, and peered inside. I even tried to look inside the rooms with dark windows a few times, but the glare of the overhead lighting reflected off the glass panes and made seeing through them impossible. I tried to listen to the Doctor’s quiet footsteps as I went, but after passing the sixth door in my hall, barely halfway in, I found that I could no longer hear him. I had to take a deep breath and remind myself we were perfectly safe—so far.

I stopped at another door and peeked inside. Again, the room was as the one before it: about five meters square, with identical blank white walls, a white tiled floor, and a single light source (it didn’t look quite like a light bulb but appeared to perform the same function) blazing overhead. And it was completely empty.

I finished canvasing my corridor and started to head back to the main hall, hoping that the Doctor would be waiting for me. He wasn’t in the central hall, but appeared to be absorbed in something he saw inside one of the rooms near the start of his corridor. I stepped into the hall and began moving toward him, trying to walk quietly so I wouldn’t startle him. He noticed me before I was two doors away, however, and waved me over.

“What’re you lookin’ at?” I whispered, stretching up and trying to see past the Doctor’s spikey brown hair. He was blocking most of the window as he stared inside the white room. “Is there someone in there? Is it the Time Lord?”

The Doctor’s shoulders stiffened at my last words and he pulled back to look at me, his face stony. “No one’s inside, Rose Tyler, maybe not for years, but there have been occupants of these cells—oh yes!” he added at my curious expression when he used my term for the white rooms, “—they _are_ cells, you were right on the mark about _that_!” His expression was animated, though the fire in the Doctor’s eyes revealed his anger at the discovery.

“What do you mean, Doctor?” I asked cautiously, wondering if we should keep inspecting the other rooms or not. The Doctor’s face twisted and I could see the rage simmering behind his eyes while he fought to contain it.

“Over the centuries these cells have seen many prisoners, Rose, more than either of us could count. And _all_ of them were sacrificed, that is, “fed”, to the Acumen. I was sonicing the rooms as I passed, trying to get a reading on what went on inside them, and the life form readings were too varied and layered over each other for me to get a proper idea of how many have been here. But each one of them was drained of all thought, all memory…their very consciousness, Rose, was taken. Stripped away from them, bit by bit, until all that was left behind was an empty shell. A husk of a being.”

I shuddered at the intensity in the Doctor’s eyes. The whole idea was too horrifying to contemplate. “Were…” I swallowed hard then forced the question out. “Were any of your people in there?” _Or any of mine?_ This last question echoed around in my head but I couldn’t make myself give voice to it. It was too awful.

The Doctor shook his head. “I haven’t registered any Time Lord DNA so far, which is just as well. It means that we may still have a chance clinging to Pandora’s Box, as they say.” He tried for a grim smile and I worked to school my horrified features into neutrality. The Doctor spoke on, his face taking on a familiar lecturing mode that he often got when explaining minute details of history, and I breathed a small sigh of relief as the savagery faded from his expression. “That said, it wasn’t technically a box, the transcribers got it wrong. _Pithos_ , in ancient Greek, actually translates to jar. Idiotic Erasmus, calling it a _pyxis_ …did no one ever think to go back and check the original documents? ‘Jar’ not ‘box’, it’s basic Greek. I mean, come on…is that so difficult?”

He looked so morally outraged at the translation error that I felt a real smile tug at my lips. I grinned at him and reached over to pat the Doctor’s arm. “I promise to tell everyone I know that it’s a jar, not a box, when we get back to London, alright?”

The Doctor looked slightly nonplussed at my remark, then his expression turned sheepish and he grinned too. “You’d better, Miss Tyler.”

I gave him a two-finger mock salute. “Right down to my sixth form Classics teacher, I swear.”

“Your sixth form teacher?” the Doctor asked, narrowing his eyes slightly. “Haven’t you left secondary already? Mind you,” he scratched the back of his head with the sonic and frowned a little, his eyebrows knitting together as he thought things through. “I’m not completely up on human educational systems in modern times. Though I had thought you were out of school by now. If not, you’re in for a heck of a tardy lecture…”

I rolled my eyes and smacked the Doctor’s arm, wringing a laugh from him. “Of course I’m out of school, Doctor! Can’t really go jettisoning about the stars when I’m supposed to be writing book reports, now can I? I meant that I’d pop over for a visit and enlighten her on the proper facts of the Pandora myth.”

Laughing a little, we made our way back up the corridor toward the main hall. When we reached it the Doctor became serious again, peeking around the corner with one eye before allowing me to follow him out. We parted ways at the next set of hallways and began a repeat of our inspection. I had reached the end of my corridor and started back up the opposite side when a claxon of blaring horns, sirens and bells exploded in the main hall ahead of me, shattering the silence.

“Doctor?” I cried out in panic, racing back up the hallway, my heart in my throat. It had to be an alarm. Somehow one of us had tripped it. Or we’d been spotted by a guard or some sort of security system and one of the Acuites had put out a code red.

I skidded into the main hall almost in time with the Doctor’s arrival and we both looked at each other with identical, wide-eyed expressions of panic. The Doctor gave me a quick once-over, scanning my body from head to toe in an assessment for damage, then, apparently deciding that I was unhurt, swung his gaze back up the corridor toward the TARDIS. I followed his look and my heart skipped a beat.

The TARDIS was surrounded. There had to be at least fifteen Acuites circling the blue phone box, massive swords already drawn and crackling with red electricity. The wailing alarm wasn’t, however, coming from the Acuite Compound itself, but rather from the TARDIS. The Acuites were wacking at it relentlessly with their swords, black splotches reminiscent of lightning strikes appearing on the blue wood.

“No!” the Doctor shouted, and I saw his face twist in both fear and anger. “They’re trying to take the TARDIS, Rose!”

“But Doctor,” I protested, trying to tug him back into the safety of our deserted hall before we were spotted. “You told me once that the hordes of Genghis Kahn couldn’t get through those doors! Just leave her alone, the TARDIS can protect herself!”

The Doctor whirled on me, eyes wide, just as the TARDIS began to make a familiar wheezing noise. A moment later I realized that the noise I was hearing amid the torrent of alarms was the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing. The Doctor grabbed my arms and looked at me hard. “They might not be able to get through the doors, Rose Tyler, but if they attack her enough the TARDIS will enable the H.A.D.S. and we’ll be stranded here! We have to get to the ship, now COME ON!” With that the Doctor grabbed my hand and broke into a run, dragging me down the hall as he brandished the sonic screwdriver in front of him.

As I ran, struggling to keep up with the Doctor’s long strides, I vaguely recalled the last time we’d been in the compound and the Doctor had been able to stun two Acuite guards using a previously undiscovered setting on the sonic. I wasn’t entirely sure that he’d be able to get us both through the assembled mass of soldiers blocking the TARDIS though. There were a whole lot more than two enemies between us and safety this time.

The sound of the Doctor’s shout, combined with our pounding feet as we pelted down the stone corridor, alerted a few of the Acuites near the back of the attack party and they turned our way. The Doctor brandished the sonic at their chests as we neared them and the air was filled with a different kind of electric-sizzle. Two guards dropped like stones and the Doctor pushed on through the crowd, his eyes on the flickering TARDIS.

“Come on, _come on_ , we’re coming! Just _hold on_!” the Doctor half-shouted, half-begged, stabbing the sonic toward another Acuite who’d noticed his arrival and swung his machete toward the Doctor’s neck, felling him like a tree. We were nearly there, only feet from the blue box now, and the Doctor lunged toward the TARDIS doors, slipping between a pair of soldiers and narrowly missing getting his head loped off, before latching onto the small metal handle of one door with his hand. I watched as the Doctor yanked the door wide, kicked an advancing Acuite in the stomach with one Converse-clad foot—sending him sprawling back into his fellows—and then threw himself inside the TARDIS with a triumphant “HA!”

—just as I felt my hand ripped out of his grasp and my body pulled back into the swarming mass of Acuite soldiers.

I screamed as I was wrenched backwards, my arm outstretched, fingers clawing at the empty air as I was born away among the surge of enemy bodies. Hands grabbed at me from all sides, clamping down onto my arms and legs, holding me in place so that I could barely move, let alone run.

“ _Doctor_!” I shrieked, terror locking my limbs into place as surely as the fingers that curled tightly around my arms, but it was already too late. The last I saw of the Doctor was a look of shock and horror on his face as he gripped the fading door frame of the TARDIS with one hand and flung the other out toward me, fingers groping for mine…and I saw in his eyes the moment that he made the decision to abandon his ship and come after…and the moment that he realized it was too late…and then the TARDIS gave a final wheeze and disappeared from sight.

**~OOO~**

For a long moment I just stared in disbelief at the place where, seconds before, safety and protection had been. But he was gone now. I hadn’t made it in time, and the TARDIS had born her master away to another place, far from here.

            Gone.

            I was alone.

            Hands pulled at my shoulders then, roughly turning me to face the opposite direction. I allowed my body to be turned without fighting it, still in shock at the abrupt turn this trip had taken. When I’d been manhandled all the way around I found myself facing a tall Acuite with burning yellow eyes and a murderous expression on his face. After a moment I realized who it was: Ragalagh.

            “Why did you return, human girl?” he demanded. “Is your race so arrogant that you would temp the Fates a second time by returning to the Compound?”

            I forced back a shudder as Ragalagh glared down at me with cold, gold eyes. Great. Of all the mind-sucking aliens I could have run into during our raid, it had to be the one who’d tried to kill me the last time I’d been here. Taking a deep breath I forced a steely calm I did not feel onto my face.

            “Is _your_ race so arrogant that you think you can trap the Doctor?” I snapped back, striving to sound cool and unafraid. “He’s escaped from you twice now, doesn’t that tell you something?”

Instead of looking abashed, or even angry, Ragalagh smiled at my remark, showing sharp teeth, reminiscent of a shark. “Ahhh….” he said slowly, drawing out the sound as he skimmed his gaze down my body, “but is that really true, Rose Tyler?”

            A good deal of my false bravado faded upon hearing my name on the lips of this humanoid creature, on a planet I didn’t even know the name of, millions of light years from Earth. Ragalagh’s smile widened.

            “Yes, I know your name, Rose Tyler. I’ve known it since the last time you and _the Doctor_ ,” he pronounced the Doctor’s name with a certain intensity that raised the hairs on my arms, “were here. You do remember your encounter with the Acumen, do you not? All the servants of the All-Knowing-One are tied into its essence, and, on some level, experience what it does.” He paused and leaned down so that his face was right in front of mine. “When you were in the Sanctuary, valiantly pretending not to have succumbed to the Wise One’s thrall, I could feel what you felt; even as you denied the fact that something…was inside…your head.” He tapped my forehead with one long finger, then leaned closer still, his lips at my ear now as he whispered, “I can still taste the phantom echoes of your wonder, your curiosity, even your _fear_ …” He wrapped his tongue around the last word in an almost sensual manner, and a shiver rocked my body. Ragalagh stopped speaking then, moving back to enjoy the effect his words were having on me.

            And they’d had the desired effect. I knew what being in the same room as the Acumen did to me, and it was worse still now that I knew exactly what went on in the Sanctuary. I had to clamp my jaws together to stop myself from giving-in to outright terror and screaming.

            “Oh yes, I know quite a lot about you,” Ragalagh went on softly. “And do you want to know the best part, Rose Tyler?” He paused politely, as if assuming I’d actually go, “Why no, what’s the best part, you utterly mad, psycho alien?” then played his trump card. “The best part is that _because_ I know so much about you, I know that _you_ know a lot about somebody else. Can you guess who that is?”

            No.

            Oh, dear god, _please_ no.

            They were going to use me to get to him.

            I saw the way Ragalagh’s expression shifted into a cat-ate-the-canary grin as his words registered, and felt sick.

            “That’s right…” Ragalagh said cajolingly, grabbing my chin with one sharp-nailed hand and forcing my head up to look him in the eye. “That’s right…you understand now, do you not, innocent human Rose Tyler? Because anything he ever confided in you, anything he whispered in your ear, _anything_ ,” he paused to stare hard into my frightened eyes with his blazing yellow ones, “he ever even said within hearing distance of you, that your ears picked up even if your mind did not register it at the time…all of it, Rose Tyler, is locked up here, inside your head.” He lifted his free hand to caress my temple in what felt like a grotesque mockery of the Doctor’s touch the night before and I flinched away. Ragalagh dropped his hands and his smile tightened a fraction in anger. “You can fight it all you like, human, but your psychic defenses are far too inferior to stop this.” He signaled at the two Acuites who held my arms. “Take her to the Sanctuary.”

            My brain kicked back into gear as the two guards began to move me forward down the hall, toward the heavy wooden doors beyond which the Acumen waited.

            “NO!” The word was a shout, half-hoarse with terror. I swallowed hard and jammed an elbow into the gut of the guard holding my right arm. “Let me go! I won’t tell you anything! It won’t help, he hasn’t told me anything important!” 

The guard responded by pulling up short only long enough to back-hand me hard enough to have sent me staggering to the stony floor if I hadn’t already been supported under both arms. The blow stunned me, but the cry I let out as pain blossomed along my lower jaw was choked off by fear of showing weakness. Trying to ignore it, I shouted again, tripping as I was yanked forward and ending up losing my footing. The two guards paid no mind to my missteps and simply continued to propel me across the floor like a sack of potatoes, my legs now dragging uselessly behind me.  

“He’ll never forgive you for this! He showed mercy the last time he was here, but he won’t make that mistake again. He tries so hard to be kind, but he doesn’t give second chances.”

We were outside the doors to the Sanctuary now and two more Acuites moved forward to pull them wide. The cavernous darkness yawned before me like the gapping maw of some unknown beast, ready to swallow me whole. I had only a moment to glance back over my shoulder at the glaring lights of the stone corridor, and then my body was flung unceremoniously into the darkness, crashing onto the hard floor of the Sanctuary as the heavy doors thudded shut with an echoing boom behind me.

**~OOO~**

            I scrambled to my knees and turned back toward the doors at once, throwing myself at them and banging my fists against the wood with a howl like a wounded animal. “No! Let me out! _Let me out!_ I won’t tell you anything! I won’t…” The words trailed off as a sob choked my throat. I fought it back. I didn’t want to cry. Crying was weak, and I had to be strong. For myself, for the Doctor. I couldn’t let them find him…or hurt him….no matter what they did to me. The Doctor had changed so much since I’d first met him. He had done so much good in the universe, on Earth, on other planets, in other universes for that matter…I couldn’t let the Acuites and their greedy quest for power take that away from everyone.

I’d just leaned up against the door, pressing my back against the wood and taking a steadying breath, when there was a sound somewhere next to me. A scuffing noise, as if someone had taken a step or moved their foot against the ground just slightly. I stopped breathing, holding my breath and trying to listen for a second noise over the pounding of my heart. Maybe it had just been my imagination…?

“Come now, human child,” came a cold, condescending voice that I knew at once. “Do not try and delude yourself that you did not hear me. Playing the fool is an injustice to us both.”

It felt as if someone had poured icy water over my head. Ragalagh had followed me into the Sanctuary. I shot to my feet, keeping my back to the door as my eyes strained against the darkness. It was a few shades lighter here than it was further into the cavernous chamber, but I still couldn’t locate Ragalagh.

“I can feel your fear, Rose Tyler. The exquisite hum of it runs through my mind like a current. Your every heartbeat…”

A gasp that was more of a squeak popped out of my mouth as Ragalagh’s long fingers wrapped around my throat with no warning. My brain ordered me to run, to fight; but I couldn’t move, and Ragalagh stepped up behind me, pressing me back against his rock-hard chest. When he spoke again I could feel the vibrations of his voice hum from his body to mine.

“You are afraid.”

Three words. Spoken so softly, yet they might have been a roar in the silent room. Three words. So simple in their entirety, but enough to wake me to the very real danger that was drawing ever closer.

Ragalagh’s fingers tightened ever so slightly around my neck, his sharp nails pricking the skin just enough to force me to twitch my head back to escape the uncomfortable sensation. But I knew that the move had been calculated to force an answer from me. Hating myself for letting the Acuite general manipulate me like this, I spoke, my voice a whisper.

“Yes.”

“Yes?” he prodded, obviously waiting for more. This time, however, I’d gathered enough of my wits back to me that my reply made me feel a little less sick inside.

“ _Yes_ ,” I repeated, my voice firm, only the faintest tremble lacing my words. “I’m afraid. But that fear won’t break me. I won’t betray him. Not him, not the Doctor; because nothing is worth that. No matter what you do to me, I’ll never tell you a whisper about that man.”

This time Ragalagh’s voice was right next to my ear, and though his voice was calm, the arm around my stomach and hand around my throat, tightened, showcasing his anger. “That is a very pretty speech, human girl, but that is all it is. Words. A futile denial which only showcases your enamoration with him. Oh yes,” and here his voice rumbled with a terrible amusement, “I can tell you are in love with the being known on so many worlds as the Doctor—though that is by far the most generous name given to him; I have seen it in your head. I have also seen that he does not share the sentiment.”

I wanted to kick Ragalagh for digging through my personal thoughts but I still couldn’t move.

“Ahh….but this should not be so unexpected. The Doctor, he is so much worse than he has ever allowed you to see. So much darker. So very much _more dangerous_.” Ragalagh’s voice was low, almost lilting, as he murmured these statements in my ear, and I twisted away from his unrelenting words. He paused then, to let the words sink in, as if I hadn’t already known that this side to the Doctor was there, known that he fought against it every single day of his existence. “But do not despair; we will cleanse you of the heartache.”

I hadn’t realized it until this very moment, but as Ragalagh had been speaking, his voice a terrible, hypnotic lull in my ear, he’d been moving the pair of us steadily deeper into the Sanctuary. With a jolt of horror, my eyes locked-in on the familiar, oscillating blue smoke, now only about a dozen meters ahead of us. At the sight of the Acumen, my body lurched into awareness with an unconscious fury born of self-preservation, my arms and legs flailing in panic almost before my mind had caught up.

What was the word Ragalagh had used just now?

_Cleanse_.

He was going to force me to commune with the Acumen, and it would take all my thoughts, all my memories, all my _everything_ …away. It would wipe me clean, and then there would be nothing left within me that was “Rose Tyler”. Nothing left for the Doctor to rescue. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to fight.

And I did. I struggled against the Acuite’s iron hold with everything inside me, fighting tooth and claw for freedom. But in the end it wasn’t enough. Using an inhuman strength, Ragalagh held my body far enough away from his that my thrashing legs couldn’t connect with him, and my writhing arms were pinned so tightly against my sides that I could barely move my fingers.

Panic does funny things to people. In some, the fight or flight instinct kicks in and they will strike out blindly at anything that comes between them and safety. In others, the terror that stems from panic shuts down the body, preventing even the most preliminary defenses from activating. As Ragalagh bore me forward, the panic that had seized control of my limbs moved seamlessly from “attack” to “submit”, and there was nothing I could do about it, even as the silent screams echoed off the inside of my head.

I could feel it now, the curious prodding at my mind as if dozens of fingers were poking at my thoughts. I tried to shake off the sensation of an almost physical touch, as if ‘inquisitiveness’ had been given corporeal form and was sorting through my memories like index cards, but all I could manage was a weak wobble of my head as Ragalagh finally stopped walking, only feet from the glowing azure mist.

He released me then, allowing me to stand before the Acumen like a zombie, my expression glazed-over and my arms hanging uselessly at my sides. I could feel the familiar lure of the Acumen now, the same pull that had so intrigued me the first time I’d been in the Sanctuary, just before the Doctor had yanked me away from danger. The same desire to just let myself open up my mind, to connect, to allow the Acumen to know me. All of me.

_No!_ screamed a voice in the back of my mind. _Stop! Danger!_ But the voice was so small, and the insistent prodding of the Acumen gathering in intensity, that I felt the will to struggle fade away until it was only the vaguest pulse at the farthest reaches of my mind.

I swayed, a wave of dizziness hitting me so abruptly that I staggered, half-turning back toward the Acuite general who continued to watch impassively behind me. The intrusive feeling in my head was getting stronger now, more unpleasant, like an incessant pounding on a door or the loud buzzing of insects, combined with the feeling that all boundaries protecting my memories had been stripped away and my mind was now laid bare for all and sundry, and the voice in the back of my head gave a last desperate cry to flee—

—and my body collapsed. Ragalagh caught me as my legs gave out, his hands catching at my shoulders and baring my limp body down to the hard ground. I was dimly aware of Ragalagh’s hands gripping the sides of my head for a brief moment as I lay on the ground, his yellow eyes glowing eerily and reflecting the flickering tendrils of the Acumen’s wavering consciousness, and then he spoke in a language I could not understand.

The words were harsh and guttural, and they made me want to twist my body away, to curl in on myself and hide from the pure, evil, tones of his speech. But it didn’t matter what I wanted. By now, my body was frozen, eyes half-open, arms and legs sprawled awkwardly…but most importantly, my mind couldn’t make my body do anything, because it was no longer my own.

The first deep intrusion hit like a pile-driver. If I had retained any command over my senses I would have flinched, or possibly cried out. But I couldn’t.

The second hit was no less painful, and my eyes flickered rapidly as the memories began to play across my consciousness like an internal movie on fast-forward.  Again and again, flashes of myself with the Doctor, or watching the Doctor from a distance, or sometimes just the sound of his voice—as if I were outside a room or behind a door from where he was.

**Flash**. _A dark basement hallway, a hand gripping mine, and a cheeky grin. Short hair and a leather jacket. “Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!”_

**Flash**. _The Doctor facing off a Dalek, arguing with it. “You’re just a solider without commands.” His voice was so cold. “…don’t you see, it’s all gone! Everything you were, everything you stood for.” The Dalek’s reply was almost plaintive. “Then what should I do?” The Doctor’s response could have frozen flame. “…kill yourself…the Daleks have failed.  Now why don’t you finish the job and_ _make the Daleks extinct? Rid the universe of your filth! Why don't you just **die!?** ”_

**Flash**. _A cheerful smile, a warm hand, a flashing sword. “No second chances, I’m that sort of man.”_

**Flash**. _“Regenerating is always painful.”_

**Flash**. _The stunned look on the Doctor’s face as we stood in the TARDIS. “Rose Tyler, did you just kiss me?”_

Faster now. More and more memories, whipping past so quickly I could barely process them all.

**Flash**. _“I’m a Time Lord, last of. There are no others. They died in the Time War.” A pause. “I killed them all.”_

**Flash**. _Hands pulled my body close, lips hard on mine. Heat. Passion._

I wanted to cry out at the intrusion, to fight off the invading sensation riffling through my every memory and inspecting it under a microscope. Ragalagh had been right when he’d said it would be useless to struggle; as a human I had almost no psychic defenses and could do nothing to protect myself.

**Flash.**

**Flash.**

**Flash.**

It hurt. Oh how it hurt. There was a pressure on my mind that seemed to squeeze my consciousness until every thought popped free. It was unnatural and terrifying, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

**Flash.**

**Flash.**

**Flash.**

Finally the seal on my silence cracked and a scream ripped its way from my throat in a twisting, aching, shattering sound that gave voice to the horrors going on inside my head. On and on it went, until the Sanctuary verily vibrated with the pain of it…

**Flash**. _The look on the Doctor’s face, frozen in absolute horror, as he stared back at me from a fading TARDIS, knowing I was lost to him._

And then the sound dropped away, cut off as abruptly as shutting a window, and the desperate relief of oblivion washed over me, blanketing my consciousness in mute darkness… and I knew no more.

**~OOO~**

            **Annnnnd scene! ;) Reviewer discussion time!**


	13. Chapter 13

**Looks like a lot of you weren’t happy with the ending to the last chapter… Mwahahaha! Don’t worry, I promise it’s going to get so much worse before it gets better again. ;)**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 13 -

 

            Blank.

That’s how I felt. Numb and dead to the world. I was vaguely aware of being cold but couldn’t process why. My head hurt, but again my brain couldn’t focus enough to tell me the reason. My cheek pressed against something smooth and cool—the floor, I realized hazily. Slowly sensation crept back into my limbs, and I was aware of my arms half-extended above my head, laying limply against the cool, white tiles. I tried to move my legs but they felt like lead weights, sprawled out behind me on the floor. Something slid down my cheek and dripped off my chin.

Warm. Wet.

Tears?

I blinked, but my eyes refused to focus and I gave up trying to make sense of my surroundings almost as soon as I started. I continued to stare at the wall, wondering why it felt like the world had ended; why it hurt to even breathe.

I curled my legs closer to my chest, tucking unconsciously into a fetal position, trying to make myself smaller, trying to disappear.

Why did I feel so hollow? So….guilty?

I didn’t know how long I’d been laying in this stark, white room; somehow the concept of ‘time’ had ceased to have any meaning to me. It was as if I’d always been here, an empty shell, abandoned to this room that mocked me with the purity of its barren decoration.

And then I heard it.

Somewhere in the background—far away? next to me?—came the sound of running feet. Then the screech of creaking hinges as a door opened. The noise barely registered in my ears, I couldn’t even manage the energy to lift my head. Then followed the sound of someone skidding to a stop in the doorway, pausing as they took in the sight of the room—of my limp body huddled on the cold tiles. I wondered if they’d investigate or move on. I wondered if I really cared.

The footsteps started up again, slow and hesitant, as if the being entering the room was afraid of waking me. I blinked at the wall again, unseeing. Unaware.

“Rose.”

One word, spoken so quietly that I wondered if I hadn’t just imagined it. The name jolted my consciousness, sending a spark of recognition through me. Rose. Yes, that was me. But the way the speaker had said it, the combination of absolute horror, fear, and sadness layering that single syllable of my name, confused me. Why should this stranger sound so concerned about me?

The footsteps sounded again, quietly scuffing against the tiles, sending muted echoes off the walls of the empty room. Well, empty except for me, though my body felt so hollow that I wondered if I really existed at all. The sound of shoes jarred something inside me and I was hit with a flash of memory: _Darkness. A darkness so deep that it was more than just the absence of light. More scuffing of feet. And then the all-encompassing sensation of terror._ My body would have locked up in rebellion against this memory if I could have moved at all, but as it was the only change was the widening of my eyes. To the casual observer who couldn’t see my face, it would appear that I hadn’t moved at all.

A pair of feet suddenly blocked my view of the wall. Red Converse trainers. Pinstripe trousers. The shoes triggered a memory.

Running. Always running.

_I’d run tonight._

Now where had that thought come from? I blinked slowly at the wall again, staring at the shoes. Breathing slowly, in and out.

“Oh Rose, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” the voice said quietly.

_So sad. Why did he sound so anguished?_

The man dropped down to his haunches, and I could see a brown coat pooling on the floor around the red trainers. I felt another trickle of something wet slide down my cheek and I itched to brush it away, absurdly not wanting this stranger to see me like this. Crying. But I couldn’t seem to make my arm move. I blinked slowly again.

The man shifted, stretched out a hand toward me, and I was vaguely aware of the fact that it trembled slightly.

“Can you hear me?” he asked softly, as he reached forward, moving his hand out of my line of sight. When his fingers grazed my cheek, brushing my hair off my face, I flinched away so abruptly that I think I surprised myself almost as much as him. The gently prodding hand withdrew immediately, accompanied by a hiss as the man sucked in a surprised breath then swore under his breath in a language I didn’t recognize.

Why had I done that? I pondered this reaction but no answer sprang to mind. He hadn’t made any aggressive move toward me; that much I was sure of, so my body must have been conditioned to react to touch this way for some reason. While my mind sluggishly tried to compensate for my lack of reasoning I curled in tighter on myself, feeling my teeth start to chatter.

_I felt......I felt......violated._

In the background there was the rustle of heavy fabric and then a _thwump_ as the brown overcoat slid to the floor. The knees of the pinstriped trousers were next to me again and a swath of heavy, brown cloth was held before me in a set of long-fingered hands.

“Rose, I’m not going to hurt you,” came the voice again, calm and steady. “Please, believe me.”

He sounded so agonized, as if wished he could undo some terrible wrong. Slowly he raised the cloth in his hands and lifted it toward me. I held perfectly still as he leaned in and carefully, so carefully, laid the coat over me. He took extreme care to limit any contact with my body as he arranged the coat so that it covered my shivering form. I started to feel better at once. The coat radiated an echo of his body heat. Almost without realizing it, I lifted a hand and curled my fingers around the lapel closest to me, clutching at it with white-knuckled fierceness.

I blinked at the trainers only inches from my nose as the man shifted and got to his feet. He didn’t go far, only retreated back as far as the wall in front of me, maybe three feet away. My gaze lifted, somehow drawn to this strange figure who’d appeared out of nowhere and treated me with such unexpected kindness. I took in his slightly rumpled suit, blue dress shirt, the top few buttons undone to reveal a brown t-shirt underneath, and the lean build of his body. My appraisal was interrupted by a soft thud and rustle of fabric as the man’s back hit the wall and he slid down it into a sitting position, his knees drawn up to his chest. It was as if his legs simply couldn’t support him any longer.

In this new position I could see his huge brown eyes boring into my vacant ones, expressive eyebrows pinched together over them. In those eyes I saw a mirror of the unnamed pain in my chest and something within me cracked.

“Rose, please!” he begged, his voice abruptly harsh and ragged as he shoved his hands roughly through tussled brown hair, standing it on end. The tendons in his arms stood out; broadcasting the strength and strain he was fighting to keep in check. Forcing himself to hold back, to not reach out for me again. “ _Please_ ,” he whispered to himself, and the word hitched on the edge of a sob.

I was hurting him. Somehow I was causing him pain, and I hurt all the worse for not knowing how to stop myself from doing so.

 “I’m sorry…” I whispered, my voice a surprise to me—it felt like years since I’d last spoken. With what felt like enormous effort, I locked my eyes on his as I said those two words. Oh those young-old eyes that somehow carried the weight of a thousand sorrows in their depths. Sorrows that I was only adding to the longer I lay here unmoving when he was so obviously desperate for me to get up.

The second I spoke, his eyes, which he’d clenched shut under the weight of his despair, sprang open. His fingers fell away from the handfuls of hair they’d been clutching and he stared at me, hope blazing across his face like a rising sun.

I pulled the brown coat tighter around my body, fingers digging into the soft fabric, and forced myself to hold his gaze, even as new tears blurred my vision. “I’m so sorry,” I repeated, feeling my heart throb with the intensity of the pain in his eyes.

“Rose?” he breathed cautiously, my name a question, as if he still wasn’t sure that I was the person he was looking for.

“I was…I was trying to…to…” I whispered, my memory of the past few hours was fading in and out as the numbness slipped away and cold horror replaced it. I couldn’t remember what I’d been trying to do. My gaze flickered around the stark, white room where the pair of us huddled, and I didn’t know it. I had no idea where I was, or who this man was, or why I was here. Something nudged my mind though, as I stared into his face trying to make myself remember, but the edge of familiarity wasn’t enough for a connection to be made.

As I stared at the stranger, I was unexpectedly overwhelmed with a bone-crushing sense of loss, the feeling crashing over me with an almost physical weight. _Oh god, what had happened to me?!_

The man had moved while I was mumbling apologizes, back on his knees, hands clenched into fists on his lap. I could see the longing in his eyes as he stared down at me. “Rose,” he repeated, and his voice was strained. “What have they done to you? Did they—” He paused, swallowed hard, and looked to visibly pull himself together before forcing himself to continue. “Are you hurt? Please, tell me what happened!”

I took a deep breath, abruptly exhausted. I just wanted to sleep; to make this day go away. But there wasn’t time for that now, because as I pushed myself up off the floor, tucking my feet to the side as I rose and pulling the coat around my trembling shoulders, the final piece of the numbness shattered. I stared into the stranger’s wide, desperate eyes and saw no reassurance there. He was as lost as I was.

“I—I don’t know…I’m so confused…I—…p-please…help me…” I managed through trembling lips, before my voice broke and shame crashed over me like a tidal wave. I ducked my head, blonde hair falling forward to hide my face from him. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t bear to meet his eyes.

And he was there. He’d moved so quickly that I’d barely finished speaking before he’d pulled me onto his lap, falling back against the wall as he embraced me. My searching fingers found his shirt and wound into the fabric, clutching at him as if he were the only solid thing in my universe and if I let go I’d fall away into black space. The man’s arms tightened around me as I sobbed into his shoulder and I could feel his chest rising and falling rapidly as he fought to keep control of his own emotions.

For a long time neither of us said a word, just held each other, reassuring the other that we were both real and alive and safe. It was only when my wrenching sobs had quieted to sporadic hiccups, and the stranger’s clutching hands had moved to gently tucking his coat tighter around me as I huddled against his chest, that he broke the silence of the room.

“Rose,” he asked quietly, two fingers gently brushing my bangs off my face so that he could see my red-rimmed eyes, fringed with wet lashes. “I need to know. Please.”

I stared at him, desperation in my own eyes. “I can’t…I—I don’t know…” I whimpered, feeling like a scared child who’d gotten lost in a crowd and couldn’t tell the police officer who’d found her what her phone number was or where she lived, knowing that being unable to tell him this information was keeping her from the safety of home.

Just then there was a sound somewhere beyond our little room, and I felt the man’s body stiffen beneath me. I tensed, too. Something about the noise in the hallway triggered a deep fear within me.

“Rose,” the man’s voice was gentle in my ear, but I still flinched at the sound of it so close to me. His hand had carefully covered my own, prying my fingers from where I’d clenched them around his shirt. “Rose, I know you’re frightened, but you have to let go, alright?” I stared frantically between the serious face with the kind, brown eyes and the half-closed door that led to the hallway—and the sounds of other people milling around. The man carefully moved me off his lap and got to his feet, grabbing his coat and gently pulling me up with him, keeping one hand firmly around mine. Then he met my eyes. “We have to go now, ok? Quick and quiet. The TARDIS isn’t far but it won’t remain undetected for very long. Can you run?”

The _what_ wouldn’t remain undetected?

“I—I think so.” My voice came out slightly hoarse, and I reached unconsciously to massage my throat. My vocal chords felt sore, as if I’d been yelling a lot recently. The man nodded, his lips a thin line as he turned from me to the doorway, his fingers tightening around mine.

“Alright then, Rose Tyler, now we run.” He paused almost immediately however, and turned back to look down into my scared face, meeting my eyes. “I swear to you, I won’t let go this time. Not for anything.”

The wretchedness in his eyes as he promised this struck a chord deep within me, but I didn’t know why. I had no time to process this odd feeling though, as the man seemed to be expecting me to say something in response to his declaration. I forced my head to nod, the movement a little jerky, but that was good enough for him. He stared at me a moment longer, then squeezed my fingers and eased the pair of us out into the hallway.

We moved slowly down the white corridor, the stranger gripping my hand tightly with one of his and holding what looked like some sort of tool in his other hand. It looked like it had a blue light on top; maybe it was some sort of new torch?

The hallway clear, we began to pick up speed. When we rounded a corner at a run, the blue torch held out before us—it didn’t look like it was giving off much light, so maybe the man intended to use it as a crude sort of club in case we ran into anyone while tried to escape from wherever we were—I pulled back on the man’s arm, pointing ahead at the strange sight ahead. “What—why is that here? It…I mean, didn’t they stop makin’ those like sixty years ago?”

The man paused in his race down the hall, stumbling a little when I jerked him back unexpectedly. He glanced between the blue police box sitting unassumingly in a shadowy corner, and my confused expression, eyeing me as if he thought maybe I’d hit my head. “Yes, yes, broken chameleon circuit, remember? No need to rub it in; not like the Acuites really care what a TARDIS looks like, do they? But they’re not getting a second chance to destroy her, so come on!”

There was that strange word again. I’d just opened my mouth to ask the man what it meant when the noise of pounding feet and loud shouting sounded from nearby. He grabbed my arm and propelled me down the hallway toward the police box, glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one had seen us yet.

“Inside!” he commanded. “Hurry!”

I balked as we reached the front doors to the small room. Hiding in here wouldn’t offer much protection if the angry people surging toward us caught up with us. “Listen, why don’t we keep going? There’s got to be a better place to hide than in there—”

My protests were cut off as the man yanked the door to the police box wide and shoved me inside, following on my heels and then slamming the door shut again, locking it securely. I stared at the doors, the tall stranger blocking the tiny windows as he peered out to make sure no one had seen us, torn between outrage at his manhandling and terror at the fact that we were sure to be found-out almost instantly—and then he turned with no warning and pulled me into his arms, hugging me so tightly that it was almost uncomfortable. Despite the fact that I’d allowed him to hold me when I’d started crying in the white room, this embrace suddenly felt far too intimate and I shoved against his chest, my body instantly tense all over.

“Hey!” I protested, as I struggled to free myself from his long arms. “What are you doing?” All I succeeded in doing, however, was tangle myself in the heavy coat, which caused me to flail about like a demented seal as I tried to twist out of both it and the man’s slackening grip. The coat slid to the floor between us as I finally wrenched away and the man took a hasty step backwards, looking startled and more than a little confused.

“Rose?” he said cautiously, watching me carefully while I eyed him with a somewhat wild expression. “I didn’t mean to surprise you. Though I guess I should have expected this sort of reaction. I wouldn’t be feeling too friendly toward me either if I’d left me behind.” His frown deepened and he bent down to retrieve his coat, slipping it back on as he lifted his eyes to mine, expression solemn.

But I was no longer looking at the stranger who’d just hugged me like we were old friends—more than friends, really—my gaze was locked on the space behind him. The space that did not encompass narrow, wooden walls and a telephone, as the sign on the front doors had proclaimed. I took a stumbling step backwards and hit the police box doors, eyes wide and my head suddenly spinning. I felt my breathing start to speed up and cringed back against the doors when the stranger made as if to move toward me.

“Rose, are you alright?”

“We—we’re supposed to be in a police box, yeah?” I stuttered the words, unable to look away from the impossible sight in front of my eyes. The man nodded in my peripheral vision, looking like the answer to this question ought to have been obvious.

“Er, technically. Yes.”

“Then why are there no police, or any ‘box’ for that matter?”

“What? Rose, what are you—this is the TARDIS!” he spluttered, flinging an arm out to indicate the vast space behind him. “You’ve been in here a hundred times!” The man was advancing on me again, reaching out for me, and I shrank back into the door.

“S-stay away from me!” I ordered sharply, and he froze, eyes going wide. “I’m gonna leave now and you’re not gonna follow me, got it?” I fumbled behind me for the handle to the door and found none. I turned quickly and shoved at the door with both hands, then my shoulder, panic building in my chest.

“Rose…” he started again, but this time hearing my name on his lips was not a comfort. I whipped back around and pressed my back up against the handless door, trying to glare at the man in the suit but finding that I was too unnerved to hold on to anger over fear.

“Stop saying my name! I don’t know how you think you know me, but I sure as hell don’t know you!” My words seemed to hit the stranger like a slap in the face, and he blinked at me, looking stunned.

“You…you don’t know who I am?” he repeated in a choked sort of voice, and I shook my head mutely. He looked mildly sick now; his pale face had turned a sort of greenish colour.

I held perfectly still, wondering if he was some sort of obsessive stalker. “I’ve never seen you before today.”  

I pushed off from the doors and took a steadying breath, still feeling dizzy with the incomprehensible reality of the room before me. There was no physical way that all this space could fit inside the dimensions of the box we’d run into minutes earlier.

The man continued to stare at me in shock, his whole body frozen. “The Acumen…” he murmured, staring past me toward the hallway. “Oh Rose, I’m so sorry. I thought I was in time…I mean, it seemed like you recognized me when I found you in that room…” He was staring at me so desperately now that his gaze might have burned a hole straight through my head. “You responded to me…but then…you would know your own name, wouldn’t you? It’s not related to me, you had that far before you ever had the misfortune to meet me…they couldn’t take that from you—welllll they could, but lucky for you, they weren’t after that…”

I blinked at him; he was talking almost to himself now. But nothing that he said made any sense to me at all. Of course I would know my name! It was my name, after all! But what did he mean, “It’s not related to me…” and who were “they”? The man in the suit continued to mutter to himself as I mulled these impossible thoughts over, looking like he despised himself.

“I know this won’t make any sense to you Rose, but I _do_ know you. And you know me; very well. At least, you did. I’m so, so sorry. I wouldn’t have wished this on you, on anyone.” He glanced behind him at the interior of the impossible room and then back at me. “I’m sure all of this is a bit disconcerting—mind you, you did come around to the idea of the TARDIS pretty quickly the first time you went through this… but if you’ll just let me explain—”

 “It’s s-some sort of special effects or whatever. I don’t know, do I?” My voice shook and I shoved at the door again, but it still wouldn’t budge. I turned slowly back around and found the man watching me with sad eyes, his hands deep in his pockets. “Please, I don’t want any trouble… just let me out…”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said quietly, and he sounded like he really did regret not being able to do as I asked.

“Please,” I pleaded, feeling the backs of my eyes prick as I fought back tears. “I just want to go home.”

He took another step toward me then and I sprang off the wall, leaping past him and sprinting up the grated ramp that lead into the center of the huge, spherical room. The man whipped around as I ran past him, his hand coming up to catch at my arm, but I twisted away and backed across the raised platform, my eyes flickering between him and the curved desktop covered with innumerable blinking lights, buttons and levers (not to mention the glowing tube in the center of it all that looked like it was full of some toxic chemical waste).

“Don’t touch me!” I ordered again, backing up as the man advanced on me. “You work for them, don’t you? The people who…who…” But I couldn’t remember what the people had done to me. I couldn’t remember anything before waking up in that white room.

“Rose Tyler you need to calm down,” the man said in a steady voice, his eyes locked on my face as if talking down a jumper on the edge of a building, or steadying a spooked horse. “I don’t work for them. I promise. You can trust me, alright?”

“If you want me to trust you, then let me out of here. I thought you were trying to help me when you came into that room. I—I thought…”

He matched my retreat slowly, pacing steadily across the platform past the computerized desktop, his arms hanging at his sides. “I do want to help you. I’m not going to hurt you, Rose.”

“Trading one prison for another? How is that help?” I demanded, having backed my way all the way across the platform, I noticed a hallway branching off the back the wide room. The man caught my eye as I took in the potential escape route and immediately opened his mouth to warn me off.

“It won’t help, Rose. The TARDIS won’t hurt you, but she is programed to keep you safe. If you leave this room you’ll only scare yourself more. Just let me explain what happened to you—ROSE!!”

He shouted my name as I spun on my heel and raced down the hallway. I passed the occasional offshoot into another corridor and the odd door as I went. I had hoped that he wouldn’t follow, but almost right away I heard footsteps pounding behind me and knew that the man was hot on my trail. With my heart in my throat I grabbed the handle of the next door I came to and hurtled inside, closing the door behind me as quietly as I could. Turning around to survey the room for potential hiding places, I felt my jaw drop.

It was my bedroom from home: pictures of me and Mom and Mickey set out on bookshelves and side tables; my bed; familiar clothing strewn over the furniture. Oh god, this man was a psychopath. He’d replicated or stolen items that belonged to me from my flat and set up a room in this place. He was a stalker, he had to be! He’d somehow convinced himself that I lived with him and now he’d finally brought me here to stay. I couldn’t believe that I’d walked to this place under my own power.

Shaking harder than before, I scanned the room for a weapon. Spying a purple umbrella leaning against the dresser, I clutched it tightly as I moved quietly back toward the door, my heart pounding in my ears. I waited for a moment, listening hard, and when the hallway yielded nothing but silence, crept slowly back out of the room.

I looked right and left down the corridor, and then decided to continue deeper in, in case the mad man had returned to the computer room to guard the exit. I held the umbrella in front of me like a club, prepared to brain the stranger over the head and make a break for the doors—I’d break the windows or find a crowbar or something and smash my way out. At the next corridor I turned right again and tiptoed down the hallway—only to find myself back in the computer room! I pulled up short, looking wildly around for the man in the suit—but the room was empty. I backed up into the dim hall again, wondering how I’d gotten so turned around that I’d accidentally gone the one place I was trying to avoid. This time I ran straight ahead, directly opposite from the computer room, ignoring all turn-offs until I saw a light at the end of the hall. I raced toward it—

—and skidded to a halt. That was impossible. The glowing greenish-blue tube in the center of the curved desk with all the buttons and screens pulsed gently before me. Beyond the grated platform I’d run across not that long ago, stood the ramp leading down to the narrow police box doors. How had I ended up back here again?

Shaking my head slowly in denial, I started backing up into the hallway once more—the same hall that I’d run into just ten minutes earlier. I turned my back on the computer room for the third time and started to run again…but I had only gone a few feet into the corridor when I slammed into something hard, bouncing off it as the umbrella dropped from my hands and I started to fall—

Hands gripped my wrists as I went down, slowing my decent to the floor, and the man in the pinstriped suit and long coat bent over me in a crouch as he lowered me to the ground with a grunt.

“Ooof! Easy there, Rose Tyler…I tried to warn you that running off wouldn’t help any.” He paused then, taking in my face; he looked slightly taken aback at the expression on it. “Er, are you alright? I didn’t mean to run into you like that—”

“Let me go!” I started thrashing against his long-fingered grip and the man stumbled, falling forward onto his knees. He ended up knocking me onto my back as I writhed beneath him, straddling me as he tried to restrain my clawing fingers, his hands pinning my wrists to the floor. “You’re completely mad! I saw that room you’ve got hidden away in back; you’ve nicked all sorts of my stuff from home, you lunatic! I don’t know what sort of sick, twisted game you’re playin’ at but I want no part of it!”

I saw as his eyes widened in surprise, then understanding. “What? Oh! Oh…no! No, Rose, that’s _your room_.”

I twisted against his hands again but only succeeded in pinching the tender skin of my wrists when he refused to release me. “No, it’s not! I don’t know who you are, but whoever you think **_I_** am, I’m not her!”

“I’m the Doctor,” the man replied, gentling his grip on my wrists slightly as he peered down into my face, watching carefully to see if the name rang any bells.

The title sent a shiver through me and I stopped struggling for a moment. “Doctor who?”

“Just ‘the Doctor’,” the Doctor replied, his eyes glinting with the faintest hint of amusement, as if he was enjoying a private joke. I bit my lip, staring nervously up into his face as he leaned over me.

“And what’s that supposed to mean then? Do you get your rocks off kidnapping girls and locking them in this mad house? Is this some sort of hospital?”

“What?” The Doctor still looked confused, though his hold on me was no less firm. “Rose, I didn’t kidnap you. Though,” he frowned a little, “I suppose I can see how you might see it that way.”

“How could I see it any other way?!” I hollered at him, and he flinched, tightening his hold on my wrists again. “You spirited me away into this place and won’t let me leave, and now you’re tellin’ me you’re some sort of Doctor? I won’t let you experiment on me, or… or… any other sick thing you’ve got in your mad head. Got it?”

The Doctor just stared down at me without responding, and the longer he was silent the more my bravery ebbed away. I could feel my body start to tremble again and knew that he could feel it, too. After a long moment in which we both looked at each other in utter silence—aside from my sporadically hitching breathing as I fought not to cry—his expression shifted from troubled to determined.

“I’m sorry for this, Rose Tyler. I know you’re confused and scared, but there’s no other way.”

“What…what do you mea—” I started, but then he released my wrists and all I could see were his hands moving toward my face. I let out a gasp of panic as he reached for me, sure that he was about to strangle or smoother me for being such a disagreeable victim, but he gripped the sides of my head with both hands instead, pressing two long fingers against my temples on either side. My hands shot up automatically, tugging at his wrists, prying at his fingers, but I was shaking too violently to put much effort into fighting the Doctor off.

“P-please, don’t…” And this time I felt hot tears sting my eyes. I blinked them back, pulling vainly on the Doctor’s wrists again. He ignored me, his face smoothing out as he closed his eyes and increased the pressure of the fingers against my temples. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me…” I whispered faintly, as I felt the control of my body slip away from me. My eyelashes fluttered as I struggled to keep my eyes open. There was something about this situation that felt familiar to me somehow, familiar and terrifying.

“You promised…” The words were so soft that I couldn’t be sure he’d heard them; I wasn’t even certain I’d said them out loud. The Doctor’s face swam before my eyes, the edges of light around it fading into blackness until, at last, I couldn’t see anything at all. My fingers slipped from the Doctor’s hands as my arms dropped limply to the floor beside my head, and unconsciousness pulled me under once more.

**~OOO~**

I drifted back to consciousness slowly, like rising through water to the surface of a lake. The dream I’d been having fragmented and floated away into the fading oblivion of the sleeping world. All I could remember of it was the tension in my muscles as I curled tighter in on myself, pulling my blankets closer as I shifted into a more comfortable position on the bed. A little sigh escaped me as I settled back onto my pillow, and I pondered how much longer I would be able to sleep before getting up for work. Mum was being surprisingly quiet, so either it was still really early and my alarm hadn’t gone off yet, or I’d slept through it and mum was already gone for the day—which meant I was already late for work anyway and five more minutes of shut-eye wouldn’t make a difference one way or the other.

            The sound of someone shuffling around across the room pulled me slowly back to consciousness and my eyelids opened halfway as I blinked groggily at the wall. Maybe mum had come in to wake me up after all? Then my sleepy eyes fell on the blue blanket I was huddled under. Blue? Wasn’t my comforter pink?

            “Rose?”

            That voice was definitely _not_ my mother. _That voice_ was distinctly male.

            “Are you awake?” the voice asked, sounding closer this time.

What? Who was that? Why was there a man in my room? It didn’t sound like Mickey, so was it one of mum’s new boyfriends? I would kill him for coming in without knocking! Shoving my hair out of my face, I rolled over and sat up, ready to rip a strip off the intruder into my private space.

“Listen you perv, my mum’s room is down the hall; and when she finds out you snuck in here she’s gonna—” I broke off, staring around in surprise. I wasn’t in my bedroom. I wasn’t even in our flat. Well, I was in **_a_** bedroom, but whoever’s bed I’d been sleeping in just now, it wasn’t mine. My eyes continued to scan the room until they landed on a tall, thin, man in a pinstriped suit. He had been sitting on a small sofa near the bed, but at my words he rose to his feet and took a step toward me, opening his mouth to speak. I beat him to it.

 “Where am I?” I demanded, working to hide the tremor in my voice and glancing toward the door as I considered making a break for it a second time. “W-what happened?”

 “You’re in my room,” the Doctor said evenly as he took another step closer; he’d noticed my wandering eyes.

I flinched away from his advancing form, scrambling backwards on the huge bed and clutching the heavy blue comforter to my chest like a shield. “Why am I— What did you—?” I broke off, unable to complete the thought. On impulse, I glanced down at my body, taking inventory. I was immensely relieved to see that I was still wearing the black pants and sleeveless blouse I’d had on earlier. It wasn’t that this “Doctor” seemed so much like the sort of man who’d take advantage of a girl while she was unconscious, but too many other factors were working against him for me to trust that he wouldn’t go that far.

The Doctor froze mid-step, his eyes zeroing in on the way I cowered on the bed, then he took several steps back from me, his palms coming up and his expression twisting somewhat before he regained control. “I swear by Rassilon, Rose Tyler, I didn’t touch you. All I did was put you to bed.”

He looked sincere, in fact he looked almost offended at the idea that I might think he’d take advantage of me, but how well did I really know him? I’d only met him a few hours ago. Then again, all my clothing looked like it was in order, and I didn’t exactly feel sore or anything… The Doctor was still watching me carefully from back by the sofa, and I swallowed hard, forcing myself to meet his gaze.

“Why am I in here then?” The question came out small in the silence of the room, and I wished I had put a little more force behind the demand.

The Doctor’s face was a mix of chagrin and apprehension. “Well, I didn’t want to just leave you in the hallway and…that is…” He scratched the back of his head with one hand, not quite meeting my eyes. “You…er…reacted badly to the…other room…earlier. I thought you might be more comfortable resting in here. Though in retrospect, perhaps that wasn’t the wisest idea either...”

And it all came flooding back to me. The white room, this stranger—the Doctor—rescuing me only to imprison me in this strange house and not let me leave…the way he claimed to know me, and how he’d attacked me in the hallway and I’d passed out, only to wake up in his bed.

“What happened?” I asked again. “In the hall…you grabbed me…what did you do to me?” My fingers were white-knuckled around the blue blanket and I fought to loosen my grip. The Doctor was shaking his head, obviously frustrated and trying to hide it. He shoved a hand through his hair, spiking it up more than it already was.

“I didn’t attack you, Rose, but I had to stop you from hurting yourself. I’d tell you what I did do, but you wouldn’t understand; at least, not right now.”

“You’re not making any sense, Doctor,” I said carefully, hoping I wouldn’t provoke him, and his eyes lit up with the strangest hint of…hope? I wondered what it was about the words I’d said that had induced that reaction.

“Yes,” he mused, making a face and shoving his hands back into his pockets. I noticed that he’d removed the brown coat he’d been wearing earlier. “Apparently I do that quite a lot. Comes with the territory, as you’ll see.”

There was another long pause and I broke the silence this time. “You said I know you,” I hedged at last, and he nodded, expression solemn once more. “How?”

The Doctor sucked in a breath through his teeth, looking thoughtful. “Wellll….that’s sort of a complicated story.”

“Make it simple then.” Somehow I was feeling less afraid of the Doctor the more time I spent with him. I was starting to wonder if maybe I’d over reacted a tiny bit earlier…not that there weren’t a LOT of things that didn’t make any sense to me yet, but the man himself didn’t _seem_ dangerous.

“What do you want to know?” he asked finally, and seemed to be preparing himself for a difficult conversation.

I sat forward on the bed and lowered the comforter. “Just tell me who you are. How did we meet, if not in…in that room…” I couldn’t quite meet his gaze as my mind flashed back to the white room; just the thought of it almost paralyzed me with terror.

The Doctor watched me for a long moment, seeming to be choosing his words very carefully. “We met nearly two years ago,” he said at last, and I blinked at him. Two years? “You were working in a shop in London and were, er, attacked when you were trying to put the lotto money into the safe. I happened to be passing by at the time and…well, I rescued you, I suppose. And that’s the simplest part of the story, I’m afraid. From here on in it gets rather…wibbly wobbly.”

“You saved me from a mugging?” I repeated, and the Doctor gave a little non-committal shrug.

“Something like that, yes.”

“And then what?” I had the feeling that there was a lot more to the story than the Doctor was letting on.

He eyed me speculatively for a moment, his face suddenly very serious. “Are you sure you want to know? The rest of this story isn’t all sunshine and butterflies…”

I could feel my heart trip along a little faster, but this time it was from anticipation instead of fear. Well, mostly anticipation. I swallowed hard then bit my lip, nodding slowly. “I don’t know why, seeing as I’ve only just met you—well, it feels like I’ve only just met you, whatever you say—but you have this sort of honest face, Doctor.”

The Doctor grinned a little smugly. “I do, don’t I? About time this face evolved enough to reflect my natural charisma.”

I blinked at him. I had a niggling feeling that he wasn’t talking about plastic surgery, though why I felt that way made no sense to me. “Right,” I said slowly, watching the giddy way the Doctor was bouncing back on his heels and feeling the tiniest of smiles tug at my lips. “Anyway, what I meant was, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Tell me how you think you know me.”

His face fell slightly at my use of the word “think”, but he nodded seriously. “I realize that you, in effect, have a form of amnesia, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor began, pacing before the bed as he sorted his thoughts. “And that most of what I’m about to tell you will probably sound more like a bad movie to your human ears, but as crazy as it sounds, as insane and unbelievable as your mind will try and tell you it is, it’s all true. You’ll just have to take it on faith, Rose, until I can figure out some way to heal you—”

I’d stopped listening to the Doctor’s speech thirty seconds ago already. My mind had latched on to four little words and refused to let go. The Doctor was still rambling about impossibilities and keeping an open mind when I interrupted him with a very important question.

“To my human ears?” I said quietly, and he turned mid-pace to face me, an inquisitive look on his handsome face.

“Er…yes?”

“My _human_ ears?” I repeated, my voice rising in agitation. “What do you mean by that, Doctor? Just what are you trying to say?

“Well, I wasn’t trying to imply that you weren’t intelligent, Rose, only that I realize how strange a lot of what I’m going to tell you will sound to you and—”

“Doctor, you said ‘my human ears’. My human ears!” I ranted, probably looking quite mad myself as I shoved the heavy blankets off my legs and scrambled frantically out of the bed. He continued to look baffled and I felt a familiar tremor start in my knees as I got to my feet. “Why would you say that, Doctor?” I asked in a forcibly calm tone that belied how close I was to really freaking out.

“Well, your ears being part of your body and your body being part of the homosapien race of beings from Earth, one could only suppose that your ears were of the same gene pool. Although,” he frowned slightly and scratched his nose as he considered something. “It’s possible that they aren’t. Torchwood has messed around with a lot of things they shouldn’t over the years. Have you had any strange sensations in your ears? Or any unexpected hospital visits? Maybe I should ask Jackie—”

I took a shaky step away from the unassuming man in the suit and his expression clouded in confusion. In fact, the Doctor stopped rambling about ringing in my ears and finally took in the expression on my face. He now looked like he thought I might be having some sort of psychotic break. I wasn’t sure I entirely disagreed with him.

“Leaving out the fact that I have no idea who or what Torchwood is, you’re really starting to freak me out, Doctor. I mean, why would you feel the need to make that distinction?”

“Distinction?” the Doctor asked curiously, stepping closer to me with a frown. “Rose, are you feeling ok?”

“No!” I cried, backing away from him again, poised to turn and bolt if he so much as sneezed in my direction. “Tell me, Doctor, why would you need to say ‘your human ears’? I mean, it’s not like we’re not both human, is it?”

He had stopped walking toward me now, a rapid succession of emotions flashing across his face: confusion, surprise, shock and then chagrin. “Welllll, if you’re going to be technical about it…”

I nearly tripped in my backward progression. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded shakily.

The Doctor stood before me with his hands in his pockets once more, a sheepish expression on his face. “I had hoped to get to this part later…sort of ease into it…” he muttered, looking uncomfortable.

“Get to what part later?” I asked, a feeling of dread creeping over me. “Stop speaking in riddles, Doctor! What do you mean?”

“I’m not,” he said simply, face serious, all traces of teasing vanished now.

I couldn’t make my feet move any more, I felt frozen in place. He couldn’t be saying what I thought he was saying. “Not what?” I whispered, barely able to make my lips form the words.

“Not human,” he replied casually, looking for all the world like he was telling me he wasn’t English. “I look it—well, mostly, but I’m not. Far from it.”

I stared at him, unable to process the utter lunacy of his words. “What?!”

**~OOO~**

**Sooo….how’s that for a twist? This chapter was emotionally draining to write so I hope you enjoyed it! It was actually kind of refreshing to try a new take on the Doctor and Rose’s first (sort of) meeting. ;) Reviews are always welcome. *shakes tin box***


	14. Chapter 14

**Sorry for the wait, I was out of town for a week which put back my writing schedule a bit, and then I was hit with the worst case of writer’s block. I’m still not entirely happy with this chapter. Anyway, welcome back to the madhouse! Who’s ready for another dose of angst and drama? No one? Just me then?? ;)**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 14 -

            We stared at each other for a beat, the Doctor looking innocently surprised at my reaction, as if he wondered why I was making such a big deal out of something so trivial.

            “Oh….my god…” I took another step back from him, jabbing an accusing finger in his direction. “Oh my god…you—you abducted me!”

            The Doctor looked offended, his mouth gaping like a landed fish. “Wha? No, I never…..I….I—I rescued you!”

            I wasn’t listening to him though, my mind was frantically trying to sort through what he’d apparently just confessed. “Wait a minute,” I interrupted the Doctor, frowning into the middle distance as I tried to make sense of this new turn of events. I raised a palm in the air in front of me, as if to ward him off, though he hadn’t moved at all. “Just…just shut up for a second. This is insane. You’re obviously completely mental, only a mad person would think they weren’t human. I mean, just look at you!” I fluttered my hands in the Doctor’s direction, indicating his very human body.

            “My genetic make-up is similar to humans, yes,” the Doctor conceded, regaining control of his emotions though he still looked a touch annoyed. “But Time Lord Biology is completely different on the inside. Respiratory bypass system, two hearts, body temperature waaaay below yours—honestly, how you humans manage when you’re cooking inside at practically one hundred degrees?”

            “T-two hearts?” I stuttered, then shook my head. “No…… _No_! I mean, honestly, how do you expect to prove that? You really are mad after all, aren’t you?”

            The Doctor was making a “What can you do?” face, not even trying to deny anything I’d just said, when something else he’d said finally hit me. “Wait, what did you call yourself? A Lord, or something?”

            “Time Lord,” the Doctor replied, dropping down on to the sofa and stretching his arms out along the back.

            I took a hesitant step closer, unable to help my curiosity even if he was insane. “And what’s that then, if not a human like the rest of us mortals?” I tried to keep my voice disdainful—no need to fuel his delusions if I could help it—but he wasn’t fooled. A grin pulled up one side of his face and he regarded me from the couch as if it were a throne.

            “Wellll…like I said, we—that is, I—look human…ish…” He frowned slightly. “I mean, for all intents and purposes, I really am. Most of the time……well, kind of……except that I’m not.”

            “You’re doing that thing again, Doctor,” I eyed him and he stopped babbling to look at me.

            “What thing?”

            “That thing where you’re not making any sense,” I replied, narrowing my eyes at him. He grinned.

            “Ah yes, as I said earlier…”

            And I couldn’t help myself. Despite the absolute absurdity of the conversation we were having, the comedic look of “I did warn you” on the Doctor’s face was too much for me. I giggled. And the grin that split the Doctor’s face at that sound was all relief and laughter. For a moment the tension in the room abated and we just looked at each other smiling broadly.

            I took another step toward him then, feeling the weight of all this new information pressing down on me. Another step…and my leg wobbled, causing me to stumble. The Doctor was on his feet and moving toward me in an instant. “Are you alright—?”

            I caught my balance before I fell and took a deep breath, steadying myself. “I’m…I’m fine. I just think that I need to…” I scanned the room again, taking in the huge bed with the rumpled blue bedding—not really wanting to return there in case it gave the strange man the wrong idea—and the sparse furnishings, which mostly included a dresser carved from some sort of very dark wood, a few bookshelves, the sofa and a couple of not-very-comfortable-looking wooden chairs.

            The Doctor seemed to realize what I was trying to say and cautiously extended a hand toward me. “Maybe you should sit down? The TARDIS floor isn’t really meant for the casual sprawling of bodies, as I’m sure you know by now. The sofa really is far more comfortable…”  

He trailed off when I slipped my hand into his, actually needing the support. This was way too much information for me to take in all at once. The Doctor seemed a little taken aback at my sudden willingness to touch him, despite the fact that he had offered his hand to me, but he wrapped his long fingers around my own without comment, his grip warm and gentle, and steered me across the room to the sofa. I sank onto the soft cushions as the Doctor settled himself beside me, not missing the way he was careful not to crowd me, though he did continue to watch me with an anxious expression, as if he thought I might faint…or make a break for it...

“Let me get this straight,” I said at last, when I felt enough in control of myself not to give the fainting thing any credence. “You’re not human.”

The Doctor shook his head, face serious. “Nope.”

“So you’re from…” I let the sentence trail off, wondering what he would fill in the blank with. “Mars?”

The Doctor snorted incredulously. “Typical human, always so quick to insist we all fit into some tiny, outdated, preconceived notion of little green men. I mean, really, do I look green? Not that Martians are green, in fact they’re more of a grayish colour, though their hair does tend to look slightly emerald in certain lights.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “So… not Mars? Where else… Jupiter? Pluto? Some as-yet-undiscovered planet?”

“Gallifrey,” he said quietly. An odd tension had settled in his shoulders as he spoke, but he said the name with a sort of reverence that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Somehow the name was familiar to me, despite my never having heard it before.

“Where’s that then? One of Jupiter’s moons?”

“Hardly!” the Doctor cried, turning to face me, a strange light in his eyes. “Gallifrey is so very far from here, Rose Tyler, that you couldn’t see it with your farthest reaching telescopic lens. But it was magnificent, Rose. Just like Leonenshie, all amber skies and silver trees that glittered in the light of the suns…”

“Alright, supposing you aren’t from Earth, why did you come here? Why was it that you just happened to be passing by when I was mugged?” I drew my legs up to my chest and hugged them, watching the Doctor over the tops of my knees.

He answered my question with one of his own. “Come now, Rose, surely you don’t think you’re the only creatures out there? Great big universe…your people have been salivating to know what exists beyond their sun for thousands of years! I mean, even upon threat of death and house arrest by the Church, Galileo didn’t give in—though he became a bit of a hermit and was somewhat cranky when someone disturbed his work…open your mind, Rose! Why do you _think_ I was there?”

My mouth popped open at his words and I gave a shaky laugh to try and hide the way his speech had unnerved me again. “You sound like you were flatmates,” I tried for nonchalance, choosing to focus on the first part of the Doctor’s words instead of trying to find an appropriate reply for the second half, but could tell the Doctor saw through my facade.

“Yeah, for a bit; incredibly brilliant man—you lot owe him hugely for the work he did defending the workings of your solar system—but there’s only so much one can take of dropping comparable objects off roofs before one needs to move on in life, you know?”

“You met Galileo?” I repeated, unable to move past this point. “He lived like five hundred years ago! Are you some sort of superman who doesn’t age or something?”

“Or something,” the Doctor replied, leaning back against his side of the couch. “I told you what my people were called, Rose, weren’t you listening?”

“You said you were a…” I thought for a moment. “A lord of time?” I frowned. “So what, your people can just stop yourselves from aging or something? Did you just hang around on Earth not gettin’ any older and schmoozing with all the great scientists?” I smirked as I said this, but the Doctor had grown serious again.

“My race was a people called Gallifreyans. Another name given to those from our planet was the title Time Lord, which, quite simply, is derived from the fact that we can travel in time.”

I stared at the man across from me. “You can travel in time?” The skepticism in my voice was palpable.

“Oh yes!” the Doctor crowed brightly, excitement lighting his eyes. “To all there is and ever was, and all that ever will be, Rose! I’ve seen the birth of worlds and the end of the universe…”

“And you expect me to believe that?” I scoffed. “Come on now, Doctor, you were more believable when you were talking about having two hearts. I mean, at least _that_ I can accept might possibly occur by way of a freak birth defect or something. But traveling in time?”

“You’ve seen it, too,” the Doctor said quietly, and when I snapped my gaze back to his I found him sitting serenely on the sofa, watching me carefully.

“What do you mean by that?” I said sharply, feeling my heart pick up speed again. He couldn’t be telling the truth. I’d remember something like that!

“The day we met you were attacked by the Autons—scouts of the Nestene Consciousness, a being from another world who …er… had a grudge with me incidentally. You got caught in the middle of everything and ended up coming along for the ride, as it were. Couldn’t shake you, to be honest. You refused to leave me alone.”

“I was caught in the crossfire of an alien war? Gee, you’d think I’d remember something like that.” I leveled a look at the man sitting across from me and his frown deepened.

“Yes, well, one would think something like that would stick, wouldn’t one?” He looked disgruntled. “The point is, Rose, you were there. And you ended up travelling with me around the universe. We went so many places…oh the things we saw…” His eyes drifted, his expression far away.

I shifted position on the couch. He sounded so sincere, so much like these events were real-life activities to him. But it was all impossible. No one had gone physically further than the moon, everyone knew that. I was shaking my head at him before I realized it and the Doctor’s gaze returned to me.

“You don’t believe me,” he stated, looking frustrated again.

“It all sounds so impossible, Doctor. I mean, it sounds wonderful, too. I’d love to travel out into space and see new worlds and how the universe has evolved over the millennia, but all I have is your word on the subject…if you were me, what would you think?”

He watched me for a long moment, looking as if he were processing my statement and thinking of a way to refute it. Then all at once he started unbuttoning his suit coat, pulling it open and starting in on the blue shirt he wore underneath. I sat back against the armrest of the small sofa, nervously watching him undress.

“W-what are you doing?” I asked hesitantly, as the blue shirt gaped open revealing the brown t-shirt he wore underneath. The Doctor’s head popped up at my question and he looked a little surprised to find me scooted as far away from him as I could get.

“Why are you all the way over there, Rose?” he asked curiously as his long fingers parted the fabric of both coat and dress shirt, baring his lean chest to me.

“Why are you taking your clothes off?” I countered, voice somewhat shrill. “If this is your way of earning my trust, I have to say you’re going about it the wrong way!”

The Doctor glanced between the brown t-shirt covering his stomach, and me, scrunched up against the armrest with a throw pillow clutched to my chest. He looked confused. “I’m trying to give you proof of the truth in my words, Rose…” He paused, and then seemed to come to a decision. “Remember when you asked what I did to you in the hallway?”

My stomach squirmed nervously but I nodded, mumbling “Yeah, I remember…” My voice was quiet in the still room, and the Doctor looked pained.

“My people are somewhat telepathic,” he said after another stretch of silence, during which I fiddled with the pillow in my lap and he seemed to be mentally calculating the best way to say something. I felt my eyes widen in a mix of nervousness and fear at the word ‘telepathic’, and the Doctor quickly explained. “Yes, we can see into minds…in a fashion, though it’s a complicated and tedious ability to explain. However, I can assure you that I can’t read your mind on a whim nor would I try to manipulate you in any fashion, so please try and calm down.”

I swallowed hard and worked maintain a neutral expression. “Alright,” I acknowledged just as carefully, watching his face for any hints of dishonesty. “Then what were you doing in the hallway…when you…when you had your hands on my head?”

“It’s complicated,” the Doctor started, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “Er, right, uncomplicate it.” He looked like this was the sort of conversation he’d sort of hoped would never come up. “The thing is, sometimes there’s this thing I can do where I can sort of meld my mind with another person’s…to share events we’ve both witnessed, or to pass information. It works best with another Time Lord but can be performed on a human in necessary circumstances; that, however, requires physical contact with the human in question, which is why I had to put my hands on your head.”

“Mind control?” I squeaked. “You were trying to plant ideas in my head?!” I started to scramble up off the sofa and the Doctor’s hand shot out, locking around my wrist as I stumbled to my feet. The motion jerked me to a halt before I’d managed to get more than a foot from the couch, and I froze, unable to even scream.

“No, that’s not what I meant!” the Doctor said roughly, looking agitated. “Please, Rose, just let me try and get this all out. I promised I wasn’t going to hurt you, remember? Please just try and understand that anything I’m doing is for your benefit.”

I tugged against his restraining hand. He didn’t really look it, but I was beginning to realize that this man was far stronger than he appeared. “Then please let me go.”

His head came up at my quiet words, and he glanced at his hand as if surprised to see what it was doing. He released me at once. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, shoving a hand through his hair and glancing away, frustration still evident in his features.

I pressed my wrist against my chest and massaged it, though it didn’t really hurt; the Doctor’s hold had been firm, unyielding, but without the intent to harm. “Yeah, wha'ever,” I muttered, hovering next to the couch now.

The Doctor sighed heavily, frown lines creasing his face. “I wasn’t trying to control your mind, Rose,” he said at last, and I stared pensively down at his seated form.

“Wouldn’t or couldn’t?” I challenged at last, and the Doctor’s gaze turned fierce, his hands clenching into fists, though he didn’t seem aware of the action. He looked as though he were holding himself back from leaping to his feet.

“ _Wouldn’t_ ,” he said firmly, meeting my gaze unflinchingly. “My people…we place a high respect on a person’s mind. To violate someone’s mental boundaries without their express permission carries a grievous penalty on Gallifrey. To force your will on another person’s mind would be a sort of mental rape; I would never stoop so low!”

He looked disgusted by the very thought, and the distaste on the Doctor’s face settled my fears a little. I licked my lips and studied his outraged expression for a moment longer before deciding that I believed him. “Ok, I’m sorry I insinuated…”

He shook his head, the rage on his face sliding away as exhaustion replaced it. “It’s fine. It’s not like you could have had any idea. The point is, Rose, you don’t remember me.” He paused, a flicker of hope sparking in his brown eyes. “At all, right?”

I stared at him for a moment, then bit my lip and slowly shook my head, a weight settling in my chest. I _wanted_ to remember him. I really did. But there was nothing there.

The Doctor heaved another deep sigh and pushed up off the couch. He was really very tall, over six feet to my five and a handful of inches. “I was trying to share memories of our past time together so you would be able to see I wasn’t lying to you. Unfortunately, sometimes, if a person has been through a traumatic experience, or is fighting the connection too hard, their body may rebel and shut down as an automatic protective measure. That’s why you passed out in the hallway. It’s easier to share information if there’s already a common memory that connects the two parties involved, so I was searching for any recollection of myself in your thoughts…but the thing is…” He stared down at me, looking very sad again. “There wasn’t anything. The Acumen stole every instance of me from you memories.”

His hand came up, as if he were about to reach out and cup my cheek. I didn’t mean to, but I stiffened at the movement, leaning away just slightly. The Doctor’s sharp eyes missed nothing though, and his reaching fingers curled in on themselves, his hand dropping back to his side. He looked away.

I looked down, plucking at the hem of my blouse. “Why—?” I started, and the Doctor answered right away, as if he’d been ready for this question.

“Your mind is very fragile right now, Rose. Honestly, I don’t know why you were even conscious when I found you in that cell, let alone still possessed of enough wits to know who you are.”

Unconsciously I raised a hand to my head, prodding the side of it experimentally.

“I shouldn’t have tried to connect with you; you weren’t ready. But I was so worried when you didn’t remember me. Then, when you fainted in the hallway…” He bit off the end of his sentence, breaking eye contact with me as he pressed his lips together, seeming to struggle inwardly. After a moment he swallowed hard and raised his eyes to me again, looking haunted. “I was afraid that I had… damaged you. Maybe even broken you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just continued to hover next to the sofa, unsure if I wanted to sit down again or if it would be safer to remain upright. For another long moment we both stared at each other, or I stared at him, trying to force myself to remember something about the man in front of me. The Doctor stood a few feet away from me, his jacket and shirt still hanging open. He looked so despairing, so desperate for me to believe him. Finally I took a deep breath raised my chin, working hard to put on a brave front.

“Alright, go on then.”

The Doctor raised a quizzical eyebrow at me, looking confused at my abrupt change of attitude. “Er…go on?”

I licked my lips and took a bold step closer to him, raising my open palm. “Give us a feel of your miracle hearts, if you’re so certain you have two.”

At my words the Doctor went perfectly still. “Rose…”

I advanced on him determinedly. “Don’t back down on me now, Doctor,” I insisted, almost in front of him now. “Unless the whole multi-heart thing was just another part of your scam? Go on, give a girl a feel…” I could feel my own heartbeat increase the closer I got to the Doctor, but I couldn’t back down either. To back down would be to give in, and to give in would be to concede control, and I couldn’t do that.

The Doctor studied me for a long moment then seemed to realize I was serious about this. He nodded in acquiescence and slowly raised his hands to draw back his jacket and shirt. Fighting the slight trembling in my fingers, I pressed my palm against his chest with a confidence I didn’t feel. Underneath my palm I could feel a quick, yet steady, heartbeat. I raised my eyes to the Doctor’s and he nodded briefly, his own eyes flickering down to the other side of his chest. With a sight more shaking than before, I lifted my other hand to press it gently against the right side of the Doctor’s chest.

_Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump._

I froze.

_Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump._

He’d been telling the truth. Either the man was a medical miracle or he really wasn’t from around here…in the most literal sense of the phrase.

_Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump._

The Doctor’s hands came up to gently cover mine and I stared at his chest, feeling the twin heartbeats under my fingers with a mix of awe and trepidation. Then all at once a strange feeling swept over me, a sensation of closeness…. warmth…. tenderness….

BA-BUMP. BA-BUMP. BA-BUMP.

The sound of my own heart seemed suddenly magnified, a rushing sound roared in my ears— and I wrenched my hands away out from under the Doctor’s with a gasp.

“Rose?” the Doctor said at once, worry coloring his tone. “I’m sorry; I know this must all be very strange to you, and normally this isn’t the way I’d go about explaining the biological inner-workings of the Gallifreyan race, but can you at least consider the idea that I’m telling you the truth now…?”

I stumbled backward a few steps, the abrupt wash of feeling fading as quickly as a spent match. I fought to get my breathing back under control. “W-what…” I swallowed and tried again. “What was that?”

The Doctor’s expressive eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Two hearts…” he began slowly. “I know this sort of thing usually means death on Earth, your bodies aren’t equipped to handle certain multiple organs, but…”

“No.” I cut him off sharply, forcing myself to stop moving away and to hold my ground. “I meant, what did you do…just now…I felt—” I broke off, the memory of the warm sensation that had flooded me when I’d touched the Doctor’s chest still floating around me in the air like a transparent echo. I didn’t know what I felt. Confused, I supposed. Strange…. yes. But also… wanted? No. _Desired_.

The Doctor was suddenly watching me very closely. “What did you feel, Rose?” He looked like he wanted to say more but was fighting not to.

“I felt…I feel…” The longer he stared at me, such intensity in his dark eyes, the harder it was for me to think straight. I’d probably imagined the whole thing. I mean, my emotions were in hyper drive right now.

“Rose?” the Doctor prodded, taking a careful step toward me. “Did you remember something?”

“I—” I wanted to touch him again. I wanted to know if I really had just made-up the sensations in my own mind. But the thought of doing so terrified me. I took another step back. “I’m hungry,” I said quickly, turning toward the door. “Is there a kitchen in this place?”

The Doctor frowned at my sudden change of subject. “Rose—?”

I turned back to face him. “I’m properly starving, Doctor,” I cut his protests off with a meaningful look of my own. “If you won’t let me out, the least you can do is give me something to eat. Now go on, lead the way to the kitchen in your magic box.”

The Doctor gave me an unhappy look as he stepped past me to open the door out of the bedroom, and I knew he could tell I was hiding something. But he chose not to pursue it, for which I was grateful. Holding the door wide, he stepped back to allow me into the hallway, then gestured to the right. “The TARDIS’ kitchen is down the hall.”

We walked slowly down the corridor, lit with bright lights set at intervals high over our heads, and I couldn’t help sneaking glances at the tall man walking next to me. He kept his gaze straight ahead, as if he was studiously avoiding looking back at me, and I took the opportunity to inspect him closer. He looked very unassuming, tall, thin, thick brown hair sticking out at odd angles— and he was staring right back at me…

“It’s not, you know,” the Doctor said by way of conversation, as if he hadn’t just caught me checking him out.

I quickly turned away and scanned the unending hallway stretching out before us. “What?”

“A magic box,” he continued, a tiny smirk on his lips as he slipped his hands into his pockets. “I mean, that really is far too mundane a term for what this place is. She’s called a TARDIS.”

I flickered a glance back at him. “You keep using that word as if you expect me to know what it means. Is it some sort of alien lingo or something? Like, um, where did you say you were from again? Gallop Fry? Is that your word for ‘house’?”

I heard a suppressed snort come from the man strolling next to me, but when I turned my head his face was neutral. “ _Gallifrey_ ,” the Doctor said delicately, “is my home planet, but the name TARDIS isn’t Gallifreyan; it’s an acronym for my ship: Time And Relative Dimension In Space. You’ve noticed how it’s…er…”

I slanted my eyes at him. “Bigger on the inside? Yeah, kind of hard to miss that.”

He grinned and the expression seemed to light up his face. Somehow seeing the Doctor look so happy caused a little flutter in my chest.

“Right. Well, it’s a bit of a mouthful to run amuck shouting ‘Quick, get in the Time And Relative Dimension In Space machine’, so, well…T.A.R.D.I.S., eh? Handier in life or death situations, and besides, she likes it.” And then he stroked the side of the yellow-orange wall as we neared the end of the hall. And I pretended not to have noticed. Much, anyway.

“She?” I couldn’t help it. Delusional or not, the mad man was now talking about his house as if it was a living thing and I couldn’t stop myself from asking why.

“Well, strictly speaking all TARDIS’ aren’t exactly male or female, but this one just happens to have the same sort of temperament as …er…” He trailed off at the look on my face and hastily backtracked. “That is, she just sort of has a feminine vibe.”

I swallowed a smile at the uncomfortable look on the Doctor’s face. In another life I think I might have wanted to be friends with a man like him. We turned another corner and a door stood open before us. The Doctor looked relieved.

“Right. Here we are then, kitchen, mess hall, cookery…” He paused in the middle of gesturing me through the door and scrunched up his face in thought. “Is cookery a word? Maybe it was eatery? Or Shut-up-your-comments-on-my-cooking-or-I’ll-stop-feeding-you—ery?”

I laughed. “Now you sound like my mum!”

The look on the Doctor’s face was odd. Almost as if he really had heard Jackie Tyler make such a comment. I shook it off though, and followed him into the small room. It was cozy. A table and chairs that could more than accommodate the pair of us and a small kitchenette area occupied the room. I perched on the edge of my chair while the Doctor opened and closed a few cupboards at random, frowning at the contents. After a minute he turned back to me, looking a little lost.

“I …er… don’t really know what to make. I never cook much, to be honest.”

He looked so concerned with finding something that I’d like to eat that I found myself feeling sorry for him. I stood back up. “Sit down, Doctor. I’m sure I can find something.”

I crossed the room as the Doctor returned to the table and opened a cupboard at random, grabbing a kettle and filling it at the sink. I set it on the stove to boil just as the Doctor called out, “I prefer English Breakfast, if you don’t mind.” That was my favorite tea too, and I found myself tossing a small smile over my shoulder at him as I blindly opened a cupboard and pulled down the box of tea bags.

Then I stopped and stared down at the box in my hands as if it were a foreign object. How had I known that they were there? I hadn’t felt around in the cupboard at all, just reached in automatically.

“Everything ok over there?” the Doctor asked from behind me. I dropped the box on the counter with trembling hands.

“F-fine,” I called back, trying not to read too much into things. The kettle had been in the cupboard next to the tea bags, it was just average kitchen planning. Nothing more.

When I returned to the table with our mugs I found a curious look on the Doctor’s face; but he said nothing as I set our tea down aside from offering to try and find some proper food. I shook my head. I wasn’t really hungry, despite being unable to remember when I’d eaten last; I’d just wanted to avoid continuing an awkward conversation. Which, of course, was all I could think about again now that my mind had come full circle.

This man had as good as kidnapped me, rescuing me from the white room aside. He may look kind and act charming, but he was also incredibly strong and able set me unconscious with a touch; it wouldn’t be wise to let my guard down around him. While I was pondering my situation I sipped my tea and offered a silent smile over the rim of my mug at the Doctor. He had wrapped both hands around his mug but wasn’t drinking anything.

“Not to your taste, Doctor?” I asked after another thirty seconds of radio silence. He made a slight face which he tried to hide, and glanced down into the steaming liquid of his cup.

“Once burned, twice shy,” he muttered. At my questioning look, one side of his mouth lifted into a smile. “The last few times I’ve had tea in the TARDIS the results were …er… varied.”

I had no idea what he meant by that remark, but as it happened I was soon distracted by something else. My head felt… strange. As if something was…brushing against it internally. Nudging it mentally. I felt a sensation of … _curiosity_?

I set my tea down on the table and looked quickly at the Doctor. He was holding his mug to his lips and gingerly sipping at the contents. He didn’t appear to be paying the slightest bit of attention to me.

The nudging feeling came again and I sat back in my chair, frowning at the man across from me now. The Doctor swallowed his tea and set his mug back on the table, too. The silence in the room was suddenly stifling. My heartbeat sounded loud in my own ears and I was abruptly reminded of the impossible reality of the _two_ heartbeats I’d felt in the chest of the man across from me. How could any person survive with two hearts? It was scientifically impossible, and yet… there he was: the impossible man, with his impossible stories about the world, and my place in them.

“How long are you intending to keep me here?” The question had come out with no warning and I hoped that I wouldn’t accidentally provoke him.

“I really wish you wouldn’t say that like I’m holding you hostage,” the Doctor muttered darkly, his expression put-out. “It’s not safe outside the TARDIS or we wouldn’t still be here.”

I took another sip of my tea and felt the brushing sensation at the back of my mind again, accompanied with an almost definite feeling something _wanting access_. If I’d had to visualize the feeling, I’d have said it was like a person prowling around a locked house, trying to find an open window so they could creep inside.

And then it hit me.

_My people are somewhat telepathic…_

“Stop that!” I cried forcefully, jumping to my feet so quickly that my chair wobbled and then crashed to the floor with a sound so loud the Doctor let out a yelp of surprise.

“What? _What_?!” he spluttered, choking on the swig of tea he’d almost inhaled at my sudden outburst. He looked around wildly, as if expecting to discover that some nefarious creature had come charging into the kitchen, and nearly overturned his own chair when caught sight of the expression on my face.

The prodding sensation was suddenly and terrifying familiar, though I didn’t know why. All I knew was that having someone poking around in my head after everything I’d gone through—regardless of the fact that I couldn’t remember 90% of it—was something I wanted nothing to do with.

“You swore, Doctor!” I said, backing toward the hall. “You looked me right in the eye not ten minutes ago and lied right to my face. I should have known better than to trust you…”

The Doctor was on his feet now, looking completely gob-smacked. “Rose Tyler you’re not making any sense. What is it that you think I’ve done?”

I was shaking my head back and forth as if I could dislodge the invasive feeling of something or someone trying to get into my head. “Stop it, just stop it!” I cried, missing the door completely in my agitation and backing hard into the wall instead. I slid down it to the floor, my hands pressed against the sides of my head in an attempt to block out the ghostly sensations. He’d lulled me into a false sense of calm, sweet-talked me with words I wanted to hear… And then, when my guard was down…

The Doctor was across the room and squatting down in front of me in seconds, holding the strange metal pen-sized object I’d mistaken for a torch earlier in one hand. He pressed something on the side of it and the top flared blue, then he waved it over me like a security guard’s metal-detecting wand and it emitted a buzzing sound.

“Rose, calm down! I’m not doing anything, I swear to you!”

I ignored him, clenching the sides of my skull so viciously I felt the beginnings of a headache building. “Get out of my head!” I shrieked, squeezing my eyes shut as panic overtook me.

I felt the Doctor’s hands come down over mine as he tried to pry my fingers free without scaring me further. Then, just as suddenly as he’d grabbed me, I felt him release me. A moment later he shouted, “Oh, it’s you! Stop it! Yes, right this second!” The command was so strange that it startled me into cracking my eyes open. Fighting hysteria, I squinted up at the Doctor. He had risen to his feet and was glaring up at the ceiling, as if talking to someone invisible. “You should know better— _I_ should know better! I’m so sorry, Rose, I should have realized…she didn’t know, that is, she was only trying to help you re-acclimate…”

The curious prodding feeling had vanished at the Doctor’s shout and my mind felt like my own again. Slowly I lowered my hands, but I didn’t get to my feet. “W-who are you talking to?” I whispered, scanning the kitchen for other people.

The Doctor frowned a little, looking faintly embarrassed. “Er, the TARDIS.”

“You were talking like you expected your house to answer you,” I said warily, gently massaging my right temple. “Um, do you often hear things that other people can’t?” The Doctor gave me and indulgent smile.  

“It’s not like that, Rose. I told you my people are telepaths, remember?” I nodded slowly and he went on. “The TARDIS isn’t just my home, it’s my ship.”

“Your spaceship….?” I repeated, a slightly dubious look on my face which the Doctor ignored.

“Yes. My spaceship. And all TARDIS’ back on Gallifrey were programed to communicate with their owners through a telepathic link. In fact, the TARDIS can communicate with any of her passengers on a certain level. It’s different for humans than it is for a Time Lord though; for you, I imagine it’s less of any sort of conversation in the strictest sense, and more of the _idea_ of emotions, am I correct?”

He stood in front of me, one hand in his pocket, and waited for me to speak. After a moment I nodded. He looked relieved that I wasn’t arguing this time.

“The TARDIS recognized you as a previous long-term passenger and was trying to reconnect with you, sort of like how a cellphone will connect with the nearest wi-fi unless you make a physical effort to cancel the connection.”

“Your ship is trying to read my brain?” I clarified, hugging my knees to my chest, trying to look smaller, more insignificant. The Doctor shook his head, then seemed to reconsider and shrugged.

“Not in the way you’re thinking, Rose. For me, yes; the TARDIS communicates directly. For humans, the answer is ‘not really’. The TARDIS senses your emotions and can send ideas of related responses back to you. Normally no one human spends enough time in a TARDIS to properly bond with her, but you…” He trailed off into silence. “Anyway, I’ve warned her to leave you alone for the time being. No need to agitate your mental state.”

I wanted to shoot back with a comment about whose mental state was worse off, but really, hadn’t I experienced enough strange things today to make me rethink what I thought was normal about the world?

I realized then that the Doctor was holding out a hand to help me to my feet, and allowed him to pull me up. He didn’t let go of my hand right away though, in fact, I had the feeling that he wanted to pull me into his arms and hug me but was holding himself back, and so we stood for a moment in silence, only inches apart. The way he was looking at me…it was if I were something he wanted more than anything, but I was locked away from him behind a wall of glass. For my part, I found my eyes drawn to the Doctor’s, they were so warm and brown, and watched me with such tenderness that I felt a faint flush warm my cheeks and quickly ducked my head. Soon after that I attempted to tactfully pull my hand out of his without raising his suspicion, but I had a feeling that the young-old eyes of the man in front of me missed nothing.

We returned to the table and our tea and sat in silence for another long stretch while I tried to get my shot nerves back under control. “So you said I’ve travelled with you before, yeah?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t elaborate and I was grateful. It wasn’t as if I would have known any of the places or people he might have talked about anyway.

“For how long?”

“Officially two Earth years, though we’ve come back to visit on a fairly regular basis. Jackie wouldn’t have it any other way.” He watched me over the rim of his of his mug.

“My mum was ok with me running off with you?” I questioned, not really seeing this happening in real life. The Doctor’s expression turned shifty and I knew I was right.

“Well you didn’t exactly ask her… you just sort of… went. Your boyfriend wasn’t too happy about it though.”

Boyfriend? “Mickey!” I cried, the name rang a bell, but the sorts of feelings that one usuallsy associated with a boyfriend didn’t surface. I took another sip of my tea for a reason to avoid looking at the Doctor, and mumbled, “And you and me? Were we…?”

“Friends,” the Doctor said quickly. Too quickly? “Good friends. Very good friends. You were my… companion.”

I raised my head and found the Doctor watching me with an odd look on his face. A nervous sort of energy radiated from around him and he wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.

“Companion?” I repeated, raising an eyebrow at him. He quickly elaborated.

“Travel companion. You… well, for what it’s worth, you helped me see the lighter side of life.”

I nibbled my lip and studied the remains of my tea, sorting through the Doctor’s words. Finally I looked up at him through my lashes, feeling absurdly shy. “Look, I’m not sayin’ I believe you… but I’m not sayin’ I don’t either. Today has been really… strange. But you’ve been really kind to me, even though I haven’t exactly given you reason to, and I want to thank you for that.”

This time I was the one who couldn’t quite meet the Doctor’s eyes, but the look on his face was gentle, understanding. “The last few days haven’t been easy for me either, Rose Tyler. But I promise you, I will do anything you need to feel safe with me until I can get us out of here.”

I nodded, not sure what to say to that. I wanted to trust him. But it was going to take time.

**~OOO~**

**Ok! So who’s still with me? This chapter was brutal to write so I hope it came across alright. I’m was trying to imagine how it would feel to have all the impossible parts of the Doctor’s life be taken at face value, much harder for Rose to believe without having actually experienced anything other than the “bigger on the inside” TARDIS, right?**


	15. Chapter 15

**Are things really better the second time around? Come on, Doctor, _make_ Rose remember you!**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 15 -

Once we had finished our tea, the Doctor offered to give me a tour of his ship—the TARDIS. He showed me an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a library that was on par with Duke Humfrey’s at Oxford, and a greenhouse—which he warned me to avoid. He promised that I wasn’t a prisoner on the TARDIS (even though he wouldn’t let me leave), and encouraged me to wander about and explore.

As fantastical as the idea of being inside a real spaceship was to me, it was still something I couldn’t quite accept. I mean, despite the fact that we’d run inside an old-fashioned police box, stashed seemingly randomly in a dark corner of whatever building I’d been held prisoner in, and the police box had turned out to be enormous on the inside—which the Doctor had explained had to do with “Time Lord technology, Rose Tyler, warping dimensions in space is part of the secrets of my people,”—it wasn’t as if we’d actually _moved_. The police box ship was still in stuck in that back hallway. If this really was a spaceship, and the Doctor really was an alien, then why didn’t he just fly away?

The Doctor was just showing me the way back to the console room—not the “computer room” apparently, as I’d been calling it in my head—when it hit me: the perfect way for me to prove the Doctor was who he said he was _and_ solve the mystery of our relationship to each other. I turned to face him when we reached the top of the ramp to the console.

“So you’re a Time Lord, yeah?” He nodded, pausing in the middle of pulling a lever and waiting for me to continue with his shoulders tensed, as if he already knew what I was going to ask. I crossed my arms and tried not to look as desperate as I felt on the inside. “If your ship can really travel in time, then take me somewhere. Anywhere!” I paused, then added, “Take me back to before I lost all my memories. That always works in the movies, right? We can go back and change whatever it was that happened to me, stop any of this from coming to be—” I broke off when the Doctor started shaking his head. “Why not?” I demanded at once.

The Doctor pushed a few buttons as he answered me, avoiding my eyes. I could tell he was troubled but trying to hide it, and had to fight a sudden and unbidden impulse to step forward and take his hand. Instead, I reached behind me and gripped the iron railing that ran the length of the platform. “We can’t cross our own Time Lines, Rose, even if we could leave; which, by the way, we can’t. I only had time to put a perception filter on the TARDIS when I rescued you yesterday; I didn’t have time to start her up and get off this planet before the Acuites locked down the atmosphere. No one can get in or out.”

“What do you mean, ‘not cross our own timelines’? Do you mean like ‘step on a butterfly and –oops! Now I’ve never been born?”

The Doctor turned back to me and it looked like he almost wanted to smile. “Not quite like that.” He turned serious, his face growing hard. “Time is a series of fixed and flexible points. Certain things you can’t change, not ever, without ripping a hole in the fabric of reality; because if that hole gets big enough, Rose Tyler, bad things come through it. Things that make the monster under your bed look like a fluffy teddy bear. Major events like the discovery of countries, world disasters, death…” He paused and gave me look that sent a shiver down my spine. Somehow I had the feeling that that last one held significance for him. “Anything that happens to you lot that effect your history—we were always free to observe, even interact within those events, but never to alter them.”

I watched as the Doctor worked, his long fingers gliding across the various buttons and levers with the sort of casual grace that only comes from years of practice. He was still talking as he worked, and I tuned back in, not wanting to miss anything important.

“Other events are in flux, which means that the Time Lords have the ability to change things. Small things. Sometimes one could go back, or forward, in time and modify events, but only so much as they don’t cause any significant changes to the end result of someone’s timeline. For example, a person may have, _hypothetically_ , been asked to keep an eye on a certain young Ludwig one afternoon, and he may have _suggested_ that the child knock about on the harpsichord in the back room as a means of keeping him out of his hair while dealing with a rowdy crash-victim from the Rings of Atcon Twelve who was destroying the living room, thus introducing Ludwig to his talent for the keyboard a year earlier than his father originally intended…thereby changing the _time_ Ludwig got into music but _not_ the fact that he was a brilliant composer who created scores of gorgeous music that are loved across the cosmos.”

I studied the Doctor as he spoke, feeling less surprised and more intrigued every time he mentioned a historical figure I knew about. I wondered what it would be like to meet someone famous back in the time during which they actually did the thing we now remembered them for. I bet it would be amazing. And yet…

“And going back to whatever happened to me is too big a thing?” I asked quietly, my eyes on the floor as the Doctor rambled on. Just then my eyes fell on a pair of red trainers, the Doctor had crossed the platform to stand in front of me, and when I lifted my head I found him looking down at me with an unreadable expression on his face. Slowly, giving me time to move if I wanted, he lifted his hands to cup my face, waiting until I met his eyes before he spoke.

“I would go back and save you _in a second_ , Rose Tyler. Consequences be damned.” His voice was surprisingly fierce and I felt a little thrill shoot through me. “But I can’t. The TARDIS was in distress when I…” He dropped his hands and swallowed hard, setting his jaw before forcing out the last words. “…when I lost you. There’s no way for me to get back to that point in time, she wouldn’t know when to land.”

            “Oh.” My voice came out small in the vast chamber of the console room, and we stood there awkwardly for a moment. Then I moved, almost without meaning to, and took half a step toward the Doctor, my hands releasing the rail behind me—and then his arms were around me, tucking me against his chest and holding me tightly as he whispered “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” into my ear.

            This time I didn’t push him away. I clung to the Doctor’s jacket and pressed my face against his chest, needing his warmth and stability. He smelled strangely familiar. The way you might not see a good friend for years, but out of the blue one day, something completely unrelated wafts through the air and brings their face to your mind. What I smelled was… metallic? No, that wasn’t exactly right. More like fresh air and… the night sky. Almost as if someone had bottled the scent of space and stars.

            I was aware of the way the Doctor held me, firmly, but with the boundaries between two people who were more acquaintances seeking comfort than anything else—never mind the way his hands felt as they gently rubbed my back, or the way I wanted to curl against him and have him tell me that my fears were unfounded, that he would be able to find a way to restore my mind and get me home again. After a minute I pushed hesitantly against the Doctor’s chest, he released me and stepped away immediately. I couldn’t quite meet his eyes after initiating such an intimate embrace, and brushed past him to inspect the console controls, more for something else to set my gaze on than from any real desire to understand how they worked. I heard the Doctor move up beside me and adjust a screen.

            “What’s a…a…perception filter?” I asked at last, anything to break the silence. The Doctor moved to another panel of the multifaceted console and inspected a read-out printing from a source I couldn’t see. When he spoke, his voice sounded normal.

“It means that the Acuites can’t see us. Wellll… more precisely, they _can_ see us but their minds tell them that we’re not really here—as long as we stay inside our hole like good little space mice.”

 “They can see us…but they _can’t_ see us?” I reiterated with a frown.

The Doctor looked up with a grin. “Precisely.” Then he saw the look on my face and elaborated. “Basically they know that the TARDIS is still within the compound, they may even know that it’s still in the exact hallway where we ran into it a few days ago, but no matter how much they really _know_ these facts, there’s some part of their mind that is insisting that they aren’t really true. Kind of like looking at a hologram. You see the apple. It looks real. You’re sure that if you just went up to the table and picked it up and took a bite, you’d be able to taste it. But you also know on some level that it’s a hologram; that no matter how much your brain may insist that the “apple” is there, it doesn’t really exist.”

I blinked at him. “The TARDIS is like an apple?”

“Yes!” The Doctor looked incredibly pleased for a split second, then scrunched up his face in a frown and threw another lever forward before spinning to face me again. “No! It’s nothing like that. A perception filter turns the psychology of belief and disbelief around on whomever it’s directed at. The Acuites can _see_ the TARDIS, but they don’t _want_ to believe that it’s there. Their minds won’t even let them get close enough to touch it. It simply doesn’t exist.”

I gaped at the Doctor. That had been some convoluted explanation, but I was surprised to realize that it made sense to me. “So they can’t get in…….but we can’t get out?”

He nodded, turning back to the console and fiddling with the controls. “For the time being, anyway. I’ll figure something out. After all,” and he paused to shoot me a blazing grin. “I’m brilliant!”

**~OOO~**

Since were apparently going to be stuck here for a while, I decided to take the Doctor up on his offer to explore the TARDIS as I liked. The hallways were long, but well-lit, and most doors opened at my touch. I discovered a broom closet with a number of odd looking cleaning supplies, several of which had labels in languages that I couldn’t read, and a small study with a fireplace, as well as the kitchen we’d had our tea in, during my wanderings. At this last door my stomach gave an insistent growl and I rubbed it apologetically. I hadn’t thought I was hungry before, but the tea hitting my empty stomach had only woken my brain up to the fact that I actually _had_ been starving earlier.

            I reentered the kitchen and started opening cupboards again. Surprisingly I discovered normal food, like fruit and several boxes and cans of familiar British brands. I was able to cobble together a passable meal and took it with me into the little study to eat by the fire. This little room was comforting in its normality. No flashing screens and beeping buttons, no dimensionally-warped twenty foot ceilings that had no business fitting inside the proportions of the tiny police box I’d been herded into two days prior. Just the fireplace, a couple of chairs, and the small couch I now curled up on.

            I watched the flames twist and spark behind the iron grate and felt my eyes growing heavy. I blinked hard and fought back a yawn. Considering the Doctor called himself a Lord of Time, there was a surprising lack of clocks or similar devices within his ship, and I had no idea what time it was. Eventually exhaustion took its toll on me, and I let my head loll back against the armrest as I closed my eyes.

            There was no easing into the dream. No, starting out with events and people that resembled reality and then faded into the frightening unknown; almost as soon as I closed my eyes, the dream sucked me in.

            _I was running. Strange how that felt familiar and normal, despite the way my heart was slamming into my ribs and my breath sawed painfully in my lungs. My feet slapped against the pavement of long hallway, dark, and claustrophobic…but I’d barely registered this feeling of being trapped when the corridor ended, opening into a cavernous warehouse sort of room. A man stood in the middle of the room, a single ray of light piercing the darkness and spilling over him so that he was the only thing I could see._

            _I stopped running and stared at the man, whose back was to me. He was tall, and had close cropped dark hair and a black leather jacket. His arms hung at his sides, his fists clenched in what I instinctively knew was intense anger. The power in the man was palpable, it warned me to stay away and yet beckoned me nearer. The silence of the room pressed down on me as I took a hesitant step toward him. I both needed and feared to see his face._

_Another step… and another…_

_And then I was suddenly right behind him. I reached out a hand and tugged on his arm, turning him to face me…_

_…and I lurched backwards in surprise! This complete stranger, this made-up fiction in my subconscious, I knew him. Somehow, his ice-blue eyes were as familiar to me as my own. He looked down at me, the anger that had been coiling in his muscles seeping away, and his expression turning sorrowful._

_He reached for me, maybe to touch my face, maybe to remove my hand from where my fingers were now clenched white-knuckled around the sleeve of his leather coat, and I stumbled backwards. His eyes had turned the colour of molten gold, and with no warning a sparkling light almost too bright to look at, exploded out of them, lighting the entire room. He made no sound but instinctively I knew he was dying._

_I watched, unable to move, as the man flung his arms out to either side, the light blazing from his body intensifying, and let out a cry of horror. Then I spun, and bolted back down the hallway as his voice floated after me, close enough that he might have been right on my heels…_

_“Bad Wolf…”_

            With a gasp that sounded loud in my own ears, I burst back into consciousness, gripping my pounding head. As soon as I’d heard the words ‘bad wolf’, a searing pain had exploded behind my eyes, propelling me back into reality with the utter shock of it. I sat up slowly, rubbing at my eyes and trying to blink away what felt like an after image from the world’s largest flashbulb. My head felt strange, as if the golden light that had erupted from the man had detonated inside my head, too. At the same time, there was an odd freeing feeling in the recesses of my mind, as if the burst of light had caused something to break loose in the back of my head.

For a long moment I didn’t know where I was, the little sitting room was foreign and cramped… and definitely not the living room in my flat in London… but as the last vestiges of the dream sifted away, I remembered that I _couldn’t_ remember where I was, or why I was here, and the irony in that revelation wasn’t lost on me.

            Why had that man seemed so familiar to me? With this thought bouncing around the back of my mind, I swung my legs over the side of the couch, stretched, and got to my feet, wondering how long I’d been out. I stepped out into the hallway, looking back and forth down the identical passages and had a flashback to my dream. What had those words meant?

            “Rose?” I turned toward the voice just as the Doctor came around a corner and into my hallway. He looked tired, but when he saw me he grinned widely. “Ah, there you are!”

            “Um, hi,” I waited for him to reach me, the words ‘bad wolf’ still chasing themselves around inside my head.

            The Doctor glanced at the door I’d just come out of then back to me. “How are you feeling?”

            “A little tired, I guess. I fell asleep for a while.”

            “I wondered if you’d done,” the Doctor mused, eyeing my mused hair. “It’s been hours…”

Trying not to feel self-conscious, I pushed my hair behind my ears and tried to look alert. “Did you want something?”

            It was strange the way he was looking at me, as if he could see inside my head. I had to remind myself that he’d explained how the Time Lord telepathic link worked, and that there was no way he could know what I’d been dreaming about.

            “Er…yes.” The Doctor seemed to give himself a mental shake. “I wanted to show you something. If you weren’t busy…” He let the sentence trail off, giving me plenty of time to make up a reason not to be alone with him if I so chose, but I didn’t take the out he offered. Instead I stifled a yawn and shrugged.

            “Free as a bird.”

            The Doctor looked both relieved and a bit nervous at my response, and stepped back so that I could join him in the hall, fiddling with his tie and not quite looking at me. We walked in silence down several long corridors until I couldn’t hold back my curiosity.

            “Where are we going, Doctor?”

            He turned toward me and the look on his face was thinly-veiled excitement. He stopped walking suddenly, and I was about to repeat my question when I realized we were standing outside a tall, metal door. The Doctor placed a palm against the metal and grinned down at me.

            “I was thinking just now about how much I wanted to show you, Rose, out there among the stars. And about how I couldn’t do that since we’re grounded for an indefinite amount of time. But then I remembered that the TARDIS has an observatory, so, well….if I couldn’t bring you to the stars, maybe I could bring the stars to you.”

            I wondered just what the Doctor meant by “bringing the stars to me”. After all, we were trapped _inside_ a building, how were we supposed to see the sky? But then he pushed on the door and it swung wide, and all questions about silly things like logic and reality fled my mind.

            I stepped slowly into the room, my eyes wide, and stared up, turning in a slow circle as I took everything in. The cavernous room was huge, by far the biggest place I’d seen in the TARDIS so far. The ceiling curved up like a dome overhead and the ground under my feet was a grassy knoll, rising and falling in gentle hills as the silvery light of the low-hanging moon washed the entire room in a pale glow. But the impossibility of the _outside_ being _inside_ wasn’t even what took my breath away… no, it was the sky. The domed ceiling of the room might as well have been open to the air; it felt so vast and full of life. Brilliant points of light studded every inch of the velvety expanse, with strangely coloured planets, and gently undulating galaxies in mixes of reds and purples, floating into view among the stars every now and then. I was so caught up in the beauty of it all that I didn’t even notice the Doctor follow me inside until the slice of golden light from the hallway melted away with his closing the door.

            “I know it’s not as good as the real thing,” he said quietly, his voice coming from behind me, and I turned to find the Doctor watching me take in the view with his usual stance of hands in his trouser pockets and hard-to-read expression on his face, “but the TARDIS has this sort of memory bank where she stores the data of anywhere she’s travelled, planets, galaxies, different quadrants of the universe, so that I can access them at a later point if need be. Essentially, this sky is made up of hundreds, maybe thousands, of layers of celestial maps.”

            I watched him as he spoke, seeming suddenly serious. His face was half in shadow, but his eyes glinted in the light of the moon. I let my feet carry my body further into the room and up the gentle slope of one of the hills, turning in a slow circle when I reached the top, trying to take everything in. After a long moment, I lowered myself to the ground, still craning my neck. I was aware of the Doctor following behind me as I stared in fascination, though he kept well back from me, hovering nearby until I turned my head and smiled shyly at him.

            “This is amazing,” I breathed, barely able to take my eyes off the constantly changing sky long enough to look at him. And it was. Living in such a densely populated city as London, with its skyscrapers and light pollution, I hardly ever got a proper view of the night sky, let alone anything as expansive as what lay before me now. The Doctor nodded at my comment but made no move to come any closer until I gestured at the ground next to me a bit awkwardly. “Aren’t you going to sit down? It’s your house, after all.”

            I heard the Doctor clear his throat and shuffle around a bit in the semi-darkness before finally folding his long legs into a sitting position next to me. I drew my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, lost in the majesty of the heavens spread out before me. The Doctor stayed quiet, leaning back on his elbows with his legs stretched out before him. For any other bloke, seeing a man in a suit sprawled out on the grass stargazing, it might have seemed strange, sort of stiff and overly formal, but somehow this casual grace suited the Doctor.

            “I know it’s not the same as the real thing, but maybe, someday…I mean, if we can’t get your memories sorted…and you wanted to and all…I could take you out there, Rose, to see the stars.”

            He made this entire speech without looking at me, his neck was tilted back as he gazed out at the sky, and both his posture and his words proclaimed the Doctor’s absolute disinterest in whether I thought this offer was a good one or not. That is, until I caught him watching me out of the corner of his eye. It was obvious at once that my answer meant a great deal to him, but he’d framed his proposal in as casual a way as possible to make sure I didn’t feel pressured to answer right off. Because, really, that’s who he was, this Doctor; he wasn’t the sort of man—human or not—who would pressure a girl into making a decision this colossal; no, he would wait for me to make my own choices.

            I didn’t answer right away; instead I leaned back until I was lying against the grass, and folded my arms behind my head. Above us, the midnight sky was gently fluctuating, sometimes floating planets I recognized past us, such as Saturn or Jupiter, and other times constellations or star clusters that I’d never seen before and had no name for. The Doctor took his cue and filled the silence by describing all the different places he’d travelled as they passed us by, punctuating his narrative with tales about the various races—human and other—he’d mingled with over the years. It sounded like a lot.

The Doctor’s voice was comforting to listen to, I realized, as I let my eyelids drift closed while he rattled off a story involving some alien race trying to take over Earth by infiltrating the Prime Minister’s office, and smiled softly. A breeze blew past, ruffling my hair and I shivered slightly, feeling goose bumps rise on my arms. The more time I spent with the Doctor, the more I realized that I wasn’t afraid of him…at least, not any more. It was hard to believe that I’d only spent two days with the man; somehow it felt like a lifetime.

“Rose?” came the Doctor’s quiet voice after what seemed like a long time. I slit my eyes back open and squinted over at him in the darkness.

“Hmmm?”

“Are you sleeping?” I could hear him shifting on the grass next to me and turned my head.

“No, just listening. You have a nice voice; I could listen to you talk for ages...” The words come of their own volition, and despite their mundane intent, I felt a blush rise to my cheeks and was grateful for the simulated darkness and the cool night air. I didn’t know why I should feel embarrassed about making a comment like that, the Doctor _did_ have a nice voice, liquid and smooth, a voice made for both addressing nations and whispering intimate secrets.

“Erm…thank-you…” I could hear the smile in his voice, even as he cleared his throat and pretended not to notice my discomfiture.

I sat up and shifted so that my back was to him, trying to figure out why my heart was racing. I wasn’t afraid…I was…content. Oddly, that word felt very true in that moment. Something about sitting here under the stars with the Doctor felt familiar and normal and safe.

I was aware of the Doctor shuffling around next to me and then a wave of warmth flooded my body. I looked up and realized that he’d slipped off his suit jacket and draped it around my shoulders, just like a gentleman from an old movie. The gesture left me feeling strangely touched. When I glanced over at the Doctor I found him with his eyes on the sky, watching a meteor shower spiral across the simulated atmosphere. Smiling a little to myself, I turned to gaze up at it too, idly doodling in the dirt next to my thigh.

“You were really close, weren’t you?” I said after a few minutes. “You and the Old Me.” I could feel him turn to look at me and kept my eyes heavenward. It was a long time before he said anything and I’d almost decided to let it go when the Doctor finally replied.

“Yes,” he said at last, and his voice sounded strange, almost constricted.

“More than just travelling companions,” I stated after another pregnant pause, and could feel the tension in the air. I’d come to this conclusion this afternoon, sitting alone in the tiny room with the fireplace. It was something about the way he way he always looked at me, the things he said. How he’d responded when I’d reacted to his closeness with fear and distrust. When I finally looked over at him, I found the Doctor watching me with an unreadable expression on his face.

“Why would you say that?” he said quietly, his brown eyes black in the darkness. He was still looking at me but his face was abruptly carefully blank.

“I’ve seen the way you look at me…” I said softly, feeling awkward and unsure how to proceed from here. To ease the pressure of the conversation I’d started and couldn’t back out of, I kept my eyes on the ground and continued tracing in the dirt. “I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like you’re so full of unsaid things that you’re about to burst. How do you hold it all inside, Doctor? Doesn’t it eat away at you?”

“Some things are better left unspoken,” he said, and I lifted my eyes just in time to see the hardness settle into his features as he turned away.

“Do you really believe that?”

Our conversation was almost whispers, yet it sounded loud in the silence of the room, our words absorbed into the dark sky even as we spoke. The Doctor made no reply to this and I pushed forward.

“I feel strange when I’m close to you.” I could almost feel the way he tensed at my words and knew he was watching me again. “I don’t understand it; I really can’t remember anything about you before you found me in that room, but when you touch me…” I paused, trying to figure out how best to put my feelings into words. “It scares me. Doctor, what was the nature of our relationship?”

I was sure he wouldn’t answer this time. I mean, there was only one logical response to my question and it couldn’t be true. I mean, it just couldn’t—

“You had…feelings for me…” he said grudgingly, sounding like the admission was difficult to get out.

The words shouldn’t have surprised me as much as they did, after all, the way he touched me, the kindness in his eyes, not to mention the random spikes in emotion that struck me when we were close…it made perfect sense that I’d become emotionally tied to him…in the past…since we apparently had a past. I mean, these sorts of reactions didn’t come from just two days trapped in a mad house together; even Stockholm’s Syndrome took more time than that to develop.

“I was in love with you,” I reiterated, “The Old Me.”

He looked away. “Yes, I suppose you were.”

“Even though we’re from two different worlds,” I pressed. “Time Lord, human, and all that tosh…”

Now he looked back, and I could have sworn the ghost of a grin flashed across his face for the briefest of seconds. “We’re not so different, you and me,” he said in a sad sort of voice. “We’re the same in all the ways that matter…”

“Why didn’t you tell me right away?” I asked as a realization struck me. “As soon as you brought me into the TARDIS, I mean, why didn’t you tell me that we were—” But the Doctor cut me off, turning toward me and rising onto his knees.

“Would you have believed me?” he demanded, his face twisted in the moonlight. He looked angry. “Rose, you thought I had just kidnapped you, would you really have had more faith in my integrity if I’d started insisting that you were infatuated with me? I mean, blimey, you were ready to brain me with your umbrella!”

I rolled onto my knees too, though in my case it was less impressive; the Doctor towered over me. I considered his words. “Maybe not right away, but—”

“You don’t even believe me _now_ ,” the Doctor interrupted, all the fight that had blazed up in his voice fizzling away into obscurity. He sounded exhausted. “Rose, I would never have brought it up unless you did first. It wouldn’t have been right, putting ideas into your head before you’d had a chance to think of them yourself…”

I flashed back to the whole telepathy misunderstanding and realized that even though sincerity verily radiated off him as he spoke, the Doctor had been fighting against his better judgment when he’d confirmed my suspicions about our relationship. He hadn’t wanted to put any undue pressure on me when I still couldn’t remember having even _met_ him before, let alone having had feelings for him. Yet, the way he wouldn’t quite meet me eyes as he discussed everything brought something else disturbing to mind. And then it hit me.

“Because you didn’t feel the same way,” I muttered almost to myself, and didn’t notice the way the Doctor’s head jerked up to look at me as I dropped my eyes to my knees.

The realization shouldn’t have crushed me like it did, especially considering I couldn’t remember having had these feelings—random emotional spikes aside—but the thought cut deep. I mean, no one likes rejection, and despite the ridiculousness of feeling hurt over feelings I could only sense through the reflected actions of the Doctor, I suddenly felt like I wanted to cry. Sitting back on my heels, I dropped my hands into my lap and knit my fingers together to stop their trembling. Overhead, a purple-red spiral galaxy pin-wheeled silently past in a haze of stars, and I heard the Doctor take a deep breath.

“No, that’s not it.”

I lifted my head to look at him, my heart picking up speed, and the Doctor leaned toward me, one hand reaching out to take hold of mine as if he couldn’t help himself.

“Rose Tyler, I—”

And then his gaze travelled six inches to the left of me and his fingers tightened almost painfully around mine. I let out a little squeak of surprise.

“Doctor—?”

“ _Did you write that_?” The question was almost harsh in its demand, and I glanced down quickly to see the letters I’d been doodling in the soft dirt as I’d watched the changing sky.

“W-what? That? It’s nothing, just something I heard in a dream earlier…” I hadn’t even realized I’d been writing actual words, but when I reached over to erase the words with a sweep of my palm, the Doctor caught my hand before I could make contact. I looked up at him, a question in my eyes.

“Rose, do you have any idea what those words mean?” The look in the Doctor’s eyes was veiled, but I could sense a growing urgency as he waited for my response. I looked down again. Two words in all capital letters stared up at me: BAD WOLF.

“Mean?” I repeated shakily, the tension in the room was entirely different than it had been a few minutes ago. The Doctor was looking at me intently, his brown eyes wide and the hand clamped around my fingers starting to hurt. “It’s just nonsense, Doctor.”

“You said you had a dream, can you tell me what it was about?” The question was abrupt, the words tumbling out so fast that he almost started talking before I’d finished. He was obviously striving for a neutral tone, but I could tell he was about a hair’s breadth from demanding the answer from me. I tried to gently extract my hand and the Doctor loosened his grip without looking away from my face. Once free, I licked my lips and swallowed, stalling as I tried to think of the best way to explain.

“It wasn’t really all that detailed, I mean, there was this man in a leather coat and he had blue eyes…” Speaking of eyes, if the Doctor’s got any bigger they were going to pop out of his head. Frowning a little, I went on. “He was alone in this room, except for me, I mean,”

“Rose, this is very important: did he say anything to you?” the Doctor asked in a low voice that I could have almost sworn trembled the slightest bit. “Did he tell you his name?”

“No, he didn’t say anything. He just sort of looked at me. And then he kind of, I dunno, exploded. There was this golden light… —Doctor, why are you lookin’ at me like that? Does that man mean something to you?”

“The words, ‘bad wolf’,” he interrupted, ignoring my question. “How did you come across them? Where they written somewhere? Did you hear the man say them…?”

“It might have been him, I don’t know. I ran away when he went all glow-mageddon, and they sort of floated after me…like a message, or a warning or something…that’s it. I woke up after that, had a hell of a headache...”

The Doctor looked like he couldn’t decide which emotion to feel at this, so they all ended up flashing across his features at random instead. Shock. Confusion. Wonder. And…hope?

“Doctor?” I asked after a lengthy pause during which the Doctor remained frozen in front of me. “Are you alright?”

He lurched to his feet without warning. “I think you’d better get some sleep, Rose Tyler.” His expression was far away, but I could practically see the wheels turning in the Doctor’s head and wondered what it was he was thinking so hard about.

Pushing to my feet, I took a step toward him, adrenaline coursing through me. Somehow I felt like I was on a precipice and the meaning of my dream would determine which side I fell off of. “Doctor—?”

His eyes refocused on me then, and the look on his face softened. “It’s nothing, Rose, just get some rest. We can talk in the morning, alright?”

I watched as the Doctor began to make his way back down the hill, his spikey hair reflecting the light of various multicolored nebulas as he moved through the dark room, and wanted to argue that I’d been doing almost nothing _but_ sleeping since I’d arrived in his crazy ship, but he was right, I needed it; somehow I still felt completely exhausted. I turned to follow him toward the door—I’d all but forgotten we were still actually _inside_ his ship—not having a firm grasp of the layout of the TARDIS just yet and not wanting to get lost again, but when I reached the hallway I found the Doctor standing just outside the door waiting for me, a slightly embarrassed look on his face.

“I, er, forgot to ask where you wanted to spend the night. I mean, you can stay in my room again, if you want—I’ll sleep in the sitting room, of course,” he added hastily and I almost smiled at his chivalry.

I considered the Doctor’s offer for a moment. I wouldn’t pretend that seeing all my things in the Doctor’s house didn’t still feel strange, more like going to sleep-away camp and setting out a few knickknacks from home to help with homesickness than coming into a well-lived-in space with all the feelings that came with the concept of “home”, but with all the mysteries I was fielding these days, I found myself craving the familiarity of the _known_.

“You don’t have to do that,” I started, and watched as the Doctor’s ears turned the faintest shade of pink before he realized I wasn’t finished talking. “I mean, I think I can stay in…in my room…tonight; if you could show me the way and all.”

The phrase ‘my room’ still felt like a foreign concept, but I forced myself not to overthink things. The Doctor cleared his throat and straightened his tie.

“Right, yes, of course. This way.” He turned and quickly and strode down the hallway, leaving me to trot along after him.

We walked in silence for approximately three long corridors and then we reached my room, the door still slightly ajar for from when I’d gone running out of it the first time. I pushed it open and stepped inside a bit hesitantly, feeling like I was entering someone else’s room despite all the familiar things before me. I turned back to face the Doctor. He was standing in the doorway, watching me take in my surroundings, a wistful look on his face that vanished as soon as he realized I was watching him back.

“I’ll just, erm, leave you to get settled then,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and starting to turn toward the hall.

“Doctor?” I called to him, taking a step forward, and he turned back at once, curiosity in his eyes. “You said I have amnesia, right?”

He frowned. “In the most mundane sense of the term, that would about sum up what happened to you; though it’s selective in a sense, the Acuites—the creatures that attacked you—they took all your memories relating specifically to me.”

“Why would they do that?” That was the one thing I couldn’t wrap my head around. Losing all your memories, sure, that happened to people. Suppression of memories due to trauma, that was common enough as well. But to forget just one single person and all the details related to their existence, why, not to mention _how_ , did that happen?

“You’ve heard the adage ‘Know your enemy’, right?” he said instead, and waited until I nodded before continuing. “Before you forgot, Rose, we had been discussing the Acuites, and the reasons they would have for wanting knowledge about me. I’ve been around a long time…”

“Time Lord, yeah, I remember…I take it you’ve seen a few rotations around the sun as it were.” The Doctor gave me a rueful smile.

“Your sun and a few hundred others; I’m over 900 years old, Rose Tyler.” I fought to keep a neutral expression on my face; really, after the few days I’d just had, nothing should surprise me anymore—but the Doctor’s keen gaze caught the widening of my eyes. “I know I don’t look it, but that’s just a bonus of Time Lord Biology. The point is, I’ve seen and done a lot of things in my lifetime and the things I know could be dangerous if certain parties were to get their hands on that information.”

“So why did they go after me? I’m barely twenty, how could I know anything of value?” We were standing just inside the door of my room, neither of us moving now. The Doctor’s expression turned dark with self-loathing.

“It was an accident, a careless mistake. You had come with me to their planet to search for a possible hostage; someone who I thought might be like me. But while we were searching for them the Acuites started attacking the TARDIS. I made you run right into the middle of a horde of hostile aliens, Rose.” The words sounded like they choked him but the Doctor pushed on, self-hatred coloring his tone. “I was stupid and arrogant and…and you didn’t make it inside the TARDIS in time. I lost you.” He ducked his head, looking wretched. “By the time I was able to get back to the planet it was too late. I didn’t know where they’d put you, or even if you were still alive; they’d summoned battalions to watch for me and it was basically by chance that I stumbled across your cell at all.”

“Doctor…” I took another step closer and placed my hand on his cheek; he raised his head to look at me, misery etched deeply into his features, and my heart squeezed.

“Rose, you came to this planet because I was afraid to go alone,” he said hoarsely, brown eyes dark with shame. “And look where your bravery landed you.”

“You went back for me,” I said softly, staring steadily into the Doctor’s face so he would see my sincerity. “You didn’t leave me there, Doctor; and even though they could have killed you, you came back for me. The way I see it, you’re not the sort of person who leaves people behind, and that requires a greater type of bravery and sacrifice than I think you’re giving yourself credit for.”

“But I was too late; they took you from me, Rose…” He looked determined not to accept an ounce of forgiveness for what he deemed an inexcusable mistake. I took a last step forward and reached out to cup the other side of the Doctor’s face with my free hand.

“Then _make_ me remember.” And I pushed up on my tiptoes and kissed him.

**~OOO~**

***skips off* What? You wanted me to continue that scene? I’ll just leave it to your oh-so-creative imaginations for the time being. ;)**

**So many wonderful comments on the last chapter! I love seeing every single review, whether you’re hating on my obstinate characters (mwahahaha!) or praising (seriously, you make me blush) my writing style, any review means you cared enough about the thing I wrote to leave me your thoughts on it, and that means a lot to me. :)**


	16. Chapter 16

**Mwahahaha! So how did you all like that cliffie? I’m working so hard not to make this fic too cliché, so hopefully it won’t read that way.**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 16 -

I could feel the shock of my actions in the way the Doctor immediately locked his body into place. Undeterred, I pressed my lips hard against his, desperate for something, anything… some sort of reaction that showed that this body, this mind, really _had_ had feelings for the man in front of me. But the Doctor, for all his spouting of infatuation and feelings, was completely unyielding under the pressure of my lips. I pulled back slowly, lowering myself back to the flats of my feet, and loosened my fingers of their grasp from where I’d apparently grabbed hold of the lapels of the Doctor’s jacket. I’d handed it back to him on our walk to my room, though I wondered if he regretted putting it back on, seeing as it had provided me an easy handhold. An odd sense of déjà vu rolled over me as I looked up into the Doctor’s surprised face, but I ignored it.

“ _Rose_ …” My name was a reproach, and the Doctor’s hands came up to settle on my shoulders, holding me back from his body with a firm grip. I glared into his eyes, frustrated that he didn’t seem to understand.

“Doctor, if a major trauma took my memories away, couldn’t the opposite help bring them back? Emotion is emotion, isn’t it?” I felt my fingers tighten around the Doctor’s suit coat once more and tried to force my body to relax. I could see the longing in his eyes, mirroring the desperation on my own face. It was obvious he wanted an easy fix just as much as I did. “Doctor, please…”

I shoved against his gentle restraint and the Doctor’s hands gave easily, he hadn’t been expecting me to take this path in the first place—hell, I hadn’t exactly planned it myself—and stretched up to kiss him again. This time, however, the Doctor’s reaction time was more honed. His hands shot out and caught my upper arms, tugging my fingers free of his coat even as he spun my body and pressed me up against the wall next to the door. His eyes were black with some unnamed emotion, but I could feel his yearning in the way he held me, especially since his last move had maneuvered his body abruptly right up against mine.

“Doctor?” I breathed his name softly, eyes locked on his, and as such could see the hesitation flash through them. Slowly, the Doctor leaned his head toward me until his forehead was pressed lightly against mine. He closed his eyes. I held my breath.

“Rose, I can’t.” He sounded pained.

“Why not?” At this the Doctor’s eyes opened, and I could see a cascade of emotions fighting for dominance. Desperation. Want. Anger. Desire.  

“I shouldn’t…” he muttered, seeming to be talking to himself now. “Not right…  Rose, you don’t understand…” He then made the mistake of meeting my gaze, and a silent stare down was triggered.

Maybe I should have let it go then, after all, the Doctor had been a perfect gentleman since he’d pulled me out of that white room, he’d made no intimate move toward me beyond the spontaneous hug when we’d first run into the TARDIS, but somehow I couldn’t do it; I needed to know. I could see him weakening the longer he looked into my eyes; he just needed a final push.

“If there was never anything between us, Doctor, if it was only ever me, then just leave now. It’s probably better that I don’t remember anyway.” I paused and took a deep breath. “But, if there’s even the tiniest possibility that this could work… please, don’t leave me wandering in the dark… I’m drowning, Doctor…”  

Something cracked behind the Doctor’s eyes at my words. I felt his fingers tighten around my shoulders, and his hearts, beating hard in his chest, reverberated against mine. Closing my eyes, my own heart dancing a staccato, I pulled in a steadying breath, trying to ready myself for when he pulled away.

Only he didn’t pull away.

I felt the Doctor’s warm breath blow gently into my face, could hear the way his breathing became unsteady, and was _very_ aware of the way his hands had to reset themselves against my arms several times as he tried to hold his body still. And yet, it was an unexpectedly short time before he finally gave-in, lowering his lips to mine with a barely suppressed sigh.

I scarcely felt him at first; he was so hesitant, so very careful, just tasting my lips. I could tell that he was fighting to hold himself back, knew that he thought that this wouldn’t end well, that he’d scare me off again. But I didn’t care. I was determined to try all avenues to get my memories back, and as cliché as it might seem, if we’d really had any sort of relationship in the past, it seemed logical that my body would react to base instincts even if my mind couldn’t. I mean, surely something would click, right?

The Doctor had slowly been growing in confidence as these thoughts flashed through my head; I could feel the moment when his self-control began to wane and his hands slid down my arms to grip my waist lightly, pulling me closer to him. At the same time his mouth on mine became more assertive, he was no longer dropping innocently chaste kisses against my lips, now he was letting instinct take over.

My back was firm against the wall, and the Doctor was firm against my front, and yet I felt my knees tremble had to reach out for further support. One hand steadied itself against the Doctor’s shoulder, grasping at his leather coat—no, wait, at his pinstripe jacket—and the other found itself sliding up his clean-shaven jaw, tickling the edge of one of his long sideburns. The Doctor responded in kind, and I felt the hand that had been creeping up my back wrap around my ribs and tug my body against his, pulling a murmur of surprise from me. Without warning I felt long fingers threading through my hair to cradle the back of my head, gently angling it as the Doctor pressed his body harder against mine, urging my mouth to open under his as a low moan issued from the back of his throat.

I pulled at his jacket, almost popping the buttons off with my demanding fingers, and tugged it down the Doctor’s arms. He shrugged out of it, letting the garment slide soundlessly to the floor as his hands returned to my hips, pulling me against his own with almost bruising force. I could feel the desperate hope in the Doctor’s every touch, his mouth hot on mine, his kisses almost aggressive in their need, and his hands…oh god…just the feel of his hands as they moved restlessly over my body, pulling me so tight against him that it seemed like he wanted to force our bodies to meld together. I couldn’t think, I could barely breathe… my heart was beating so hard it almost hurt.

I was supposed to be doing something, wasn’t I? Processing something…. —oh god, could this man kiss…

“Rose…”

My name sounded far away in my own ears, but I was too dizzy to respond. I ignored other words that followed, instead pulling at whatever part of the Doctor my hands could reach, trying to get even closer, though there was already no space between us. I wound my fingers into his thick hair—he had some _really_ great hair, though for some reason I’d been half expecting it to feel short and bristly, which was odd considering how prominent the Doctor’s artfully messy locks had always been whenever I’d looked at him—but I dismissed the thought almost as soon as it had presented itself, being too busy pressing myself flush against the Doctor’s chest, and feeling a low sort of rumble issue from his throat as his body responded automatically.

Distracted by the way the Doctor was kissing his way along my jawline; I tilted my head back and wondered vaguely how far I was willing to take this experiment, catching sight of the edge of my apparent bed out of the corner of my eye. Was I desperate enough to—

All at once, however, the passion-driven hands on my body became restraining, gently but firmly pushing me away. I couldn’t help the frustrated cry of protest that slipped past my lips when the Doctor pulled back, and I blinked hazily up into his face, wondering what was going on.

“What’s wrong?” My voice sounded breathy and a little slurred as I peered at the Doctor in confusion. He was looking down at me with an odd look on his face. “Doctor? What—?”

Then the arm around my back loosened and the Doctor raised a hand to brush my now thoroughly mussed hair back off my face, ghosting his long, tapered fingers down my cheek on his way back. He was breathing hard but his expression was unexpectedly serious.

“Rose, are you alright?”

I tried to catch my breath, feeling my whole body trembling faintly from the intensity of what had just happened. “I…I’m fine…?”

Apparently that wasn’t the right answer. The Doctor’s face tightened and he maneuvered his body back from me so he could look into my eyes. “You’re crying.”

I was _what_? The thought was absurd. Slowly I lifted the hand that had been clenched around his shirt collar and touched my face. My fingertips came away wet.

“What?” I stared at my hand again, feeling the rush from the Doctor’s kisses ebbing away. “I…I don’t understand?”

The Doctor gazed at me for a long moment, studying my face as if trying to memorize it. At last he sighed, shaking his head slowly as he looked away, muttering, “This was a bad idea.”

He started to step back, that smooth mask of indifference dropping into place as he did so; and maybe I’d only spent a few days with the man, but I could already tell that when he looked like this he was hiding something. I reached for him, but he sidestepped my grasping hands and I dropped them to my sides, feeling foolish.

“Doctor…” The pricking behind my eyes was suddenly there in earnest, and I had to blink hard not to break down as I stared at him, unmoving in front of me. I could tell that my crying was making the Doctor uncomfortable, but I couldn’t seem to stop the silent tears that slid down my cheeks. “I’m sorry. You’re right; I shouldn’t have pushed you into this.” I ducked my head, hiding behind my hair, and swiped awkwardly at my face with the back of my hand as a shaky laugh burbled out of my throat, hitching in the middle. “I d-don’t even know why I’m crying…”

And I didn’t. I didn’t feel sad, or hurt, or frightened… none of the usual emotions behind crying. Strangely, I felt… protected. Safe. As if, by kissing me, the Doctor had proven that he would do anything for me.

There was a long pause after that, during which I fiddled with my hair and the Doctor gazed at me, looking like he was trying to decide whether or not to say something. Finally he cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Rose, but I have to ask… Did you— Did anything….?”

Slowly I shook my head, watching as the Doctor clamped down on any emotion he might have been feeling at my response, trying not to see the way his face went carefully blank as he gave me a tight nod, not quite meeting my eyes. I leaned back against the wall of my room and closed my eyes with a sigh, feeling completely drained. Barely seconds later I started at a brush against my cheek, my eyes fluttering back open to reveal that the Doctor had moved closer once more, sliding his warm hand against the side of my face, and gently brushing a tear off my cheek with his thumb.

“We’ll figure this out, Rose, just you watch us. Now’s not the time for giving up, eh? That’s not the Rose Tyler I know and—” He cleared his throat and dropped his hand. “Get some rest, alright? Maybe something new will come to light in the morning.”

I nodded my acquiescence, at least, I think I did, I might not have moved at all. Either way, the Doctor backed away from and turned toward the door, casting me one last, penetrating look before disappearing into the hallway and closing my door behind him.

**~OOO~**

I stood against the wall for a long minute after the Doctor had left my room, replaying everything I’d felt when he’d kissed me. A heavy weight of disappointment settled in my chest; I’d really thought that something would have happened. I’d been so sure. But how could I tell the Doctor that the only thing that had crossed my mind as he’d been kissing me had been flashes from my subconscious superimposing the man from my dream over the man holding me? Guilt washed through my like a wave, as if somehow I’d cheated on the Doctor by thinking about that other man while twined in his embrace.

            Shaking my head in defeat, I slowly crossed the room and pushed open a side door, finding a bathroom inside. Perfect. A long, hot, shower was exactly what I needed right now. And then about twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep.

The steady spray of the water loosened my tense muscles, drawing the strain of the last few days out of my body, and I tried not to think about the way the Doctor’s hands had very recently been touching certain parts of me—maybe I should make this a cold shower instead.

I stood under the pounding, too-hot water until it began to run cold, then toweled off and wandered back into the bedroom proper, in search of something to wear to bed. I found familiar flannel pajamas in the top drawer of the dresser and pulled them on, glancing back at the wall near the door where not so long ago I’d been snogging a near-stranger. Only he wasn’t really a stranger, was he? Just then my eyes lit on a pile of brown fabric. I took a step closer and realized it was the Doctor’s suit jacket; he must have left it behind when he’d gone to bed.

I padded across the floor and squatted down to pick up the jacket, fingering the soft material as I turned around and returned to my bed. Mind overly full of unanswered questions, I crawled to the middle of the huge bed and curled up hugging a pillow, the Doctor’s pinstriped jacket spread across the covers next to me. Absently, I stroked my hand down its front, feeling my face burn as the memory of my hands practically ripping it off the Doctor’s back paraded through my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut with a groan, a wave of mortification rolling over me. I couldn’t believe how I’d thrown myself at him. I mean, even if I _had_ had feelings for him in the past, I wasn’t the type of girl who initiated things like this! Sure, I liked a good snog as much as the next girl, but I wasn’t so pushy and straightforward; never had been, just ask Mickey. Or maybe I was. Hell, how was I supposed to know the nature of our relationship? Getting as much information from the Doctor as I had done had been akin to pulling teeth.

I skimmed my fingers lightly over the jacket once more, trying to numb my mind enough for sleep to take hold, but I found myself blinking my eyes open again when my wandering hand ran into an obstruction. Squinting, I peered over at the jacket, frowning down at the lump under my fingers, and then curiosity overtook me and I sat up, pulling the Doctor’s coat onto my lap and spreading it open to feel about inside. There was a hidden pocket sewn into the lining of the inner left side of the jacket, and secured within it were two things: a folded piece of white paper that looked to be made of a high-quality stationary, and the odd silver and blue tool that the Doctor had been buzzing at me earlier.

I glanced at the thin metal device for a moment, then set it beside me on the comforter so I could unfold the paper instead. I had been right, the stationary, though creased about the edges as though it had been opened and refolded many times, was heavy and probably very expensive, it even had a pearly sheen to it when the light hit it just right, but that wasn’t what really caught my eye. No, what made me sit up straighter and push my hair out of my face was the writing on it—or more precisely, the drawing, because the graceful, whirling circles and lines embossed in gold ink across the page were more like a graphic design than any sort of language I’d ever seen. Yet there, right at the top of the page, was a single, more separate collection of lines and interconnected circles, that I found I couldn’t stop staring at. Somehow this particular symbol seemed to leap off the paper at me, tantalizingly familiar in the way a half-heard word in a foreign language teases at the edge of your memory, promising that you’ll be able to understand it if only you listen harder next time.

I ran my fingertips gently over the symbols, fascinated with their mysterious beauty. Something about the writing spoke to me, despite the fact that I couldn’t read it. I thought about asking the Doctor what it said, then realized I’d have to admit to rifling through his pockets if I did so, and reconsidered. Maybe if I could bring it up in a less incriminating way…

A yawn overtook me just as I was lifting the note up to my nose to get a closer look at the characters, and I clapped a hand to my mouth to stifle it. Wrapped up in my curiosity I’d nearly forgotten how exhausted I was, both mentally and physically; whatever the note meant I was sure it would keep until the morning (or whenever I woke up, seeing as I had no watch and the TARDIS wasn’t actually open to the sky, no matter what tricks the Doctor had pulled in the Observatory earlier).

Carefully refolding the note, I slipped it back into the pocket of the Doctor’s jacket, along with the screwdriver. Then I blinked sleepily at the now-hidden tool and frowned. _Screwdriver_? Was that what it was? A jumped-up screwdriver if ever there was one. Maybe it was electric. But even if it was, it didn’t look like any screwdriver I’d ever seen, so why had my brain pulled that label out?

Shrugging, I decided that was a problem for another day and crawled beneath the heavy blue comforter, sinking gratefully into the soft mattress with my eyes drifting closed almost before my head hit the pillow. As my breathing deepened and sleep gently pulled me under, my hand inched across the covers to splay across the front of the pinstripe jacket, resting lightly right where the Doctor’s heart(s) would be. It was strange, but somehow the gesture felt comforting. The softest of smiles settled onto my lips as the world fell away, and soon my thoughts were blissfully blank.

**~OOO~**

            I woke with my stomach growling and my face mashed up against something lumpy; in fact, something small and hard was pressing into my cheek. With an a huge yawn, I pushed back the covers and stretched my arms and legs like a cat, then I blinked my eyes open and squinted at foreign object I’d been sleeping on.

            The rumpled material of the Doctor’s pinstripe jacket stared up at me from next to my pillow. Rubbing at my cheek, I realized the hard object I’d been laying on had been one of the buttons down the front. Had I been sleeping cuddled up with his jacket? Trying not to overthink what my addled brain had been doing the previous night, I shook my bedraggled hair out of my face and climbed out of bed to get dressed.

            I found familiar jeans and a tank top in the dresser and pulled them on, adding a cropped cardigan to ward off the cool air of the TARDIS, and then headed into the ensuite to try and work the tangles out of my hair. Twenty minutes later I’d finished my make-up and crafted some sort of presentable style out of my bedhead, and decided to venture out into the TARDIS in search of the Doctor.

            I had no idea how he was going to react to seeing me this morning, especially after my horribly failed experiment of the night before. Would he be standoffish like that bloke I’d snogged at the shop Christmas party that one year, after Shareen had gotten one too many drinks into me, and act like whatever had happened between us that night had burned up with the morning mist? Or would he act like nothing had happened at all? Or maybe—and I barely allowed myself to give voice to the thought—he’d want to try again?

            Shaking my head, I pushed my hair behind my ears and turned down a hallway at random—I really had no idea where I was going. After three random turns down identical corridors I heard it: the sound of clinking and banging, the noise that accompanied someone working with tools. I followed the sound until I emerged in the console room, where I discovered the long legs of the Doctor sticking out from an open hatch in the floor.

            “Um, hello?” I raised my voice a little to be heard over the racket, but the Doctor seemed impervious to any distractions.

I walked a little nearer and peered down at him. He was laying on his back, his whole body from the waist down bent backwards into the opening, with only one foot hooked around a strut beneath the console, apparently to keep his entire body from plunging into the hole in the floor.

            “Doctor?” I called again, and the Doctor’s legs jerked with surprise, followed shortly by a clatter, a receding series of bangs, and a “ _Rassilon_! That was my socket wrench from the Monks of Tresslon Eight!” echoing off the tinny walls of the shaft he’d stuck his head down.

            I had jumped back when the Doctor had started flailing his legs, narrowly avoiding taking a solid kick to my left shin, but I couldn’t help watching the way he pulled himself up out of the hatch, his lean body folding in on itself and his abs contracting with a suggestion of the deep strength he’d hinted at last night.

            _Oh god_. I could feel my cheeks start to heat up as I flashed back to the last time we’d been in a room together. Maybe I should have stayed in bed today. Maybe I could just block out last night like my brain was so effectively blocking out everything else to do with the Doctor? However, I was only allowed approximately five seconds of inner turmoil before the Doctor popped out of the floor like a wonky jack-in-the-box, his hair all sixes and sevens and a cheery grin on his face.

            “Oh, Rose! You’re awake!”

            I blinked at him. “Yeah…” I replied slowly, drawing out the word as I took in the Doctor’s appearance. He was in shirtsleeves and had thrown his tie haphazardly over one of the console control’s many levers, also, on closer inspection, he seemed to have a smudge of some unidentifiable dark substance across one cheek. “And _you_ look like you’ve been up since before the sun. Did you even _go_ to bed l-last night?” I only stuttered the faintest bit when I brought up yesterday, so he probably didn’t notice. Right?

            “Nope! One of the other bonuses of being a Time Lord, Rose Tyler! We need far less sleep than humans do; I caught a few hours a couple of days ago, I’ll be good until Thursday!”

            Was it me, or did his voice sound a little manic? Just a touch overly cheerful?

            “Oh,” I muttered faintly, a little thrown by the Doctor’s attitude. “Right.” Pretending it never happened then, apparently. Alright, I could deal with that. I flipped my hair over my shoulder and regarded the grinning man still sprawled on the floor before me. “So, what were you doing just now?”

            “Bit o’ maintenance; been neglecting the poor girl lately, and she hasn’t been too pleased with me over it.” The Doctor cast an affectionate glance at the console as if he were talking to a pet dog, then pushed himself to his feet, springing up off the floor and straightening to his full height so quickly that I nearly stumbled moving backwards trying to get out of his way.

            “Sorry!”

            “Sorry!”

            Our apologizes clashed in midair and we were both struck mute by the awkward silence that followed. Wonderful. So we were going to play the “we snogged and we’re not talking about it because we don’t want to create an uncomfortable situation, which we’re doing by staring at each other and not saying anything anyway” game. I felt the beginnings of a headache coming on.

            “Doctor—” I started, just as he turned back toward me, scratching the back of his head with one hand.

            “Rose—”

            Cue second awkward pause.

            “Ahem…” the Doctor cleared his throat and gestured at me. “Ladies first?”

            I hadn’t really planned anything insightful to say just now, I had only wanted to fill the terrible silence in the room, but there he was: waiting, with that polite, inquisitive look on his face, and I found myself talking before I was really aware of the words coming out of my mouth.

            “Look Doctor, I’ve been thinking,” I wandered up to the console and stared down at it, leaning my palms flat against the edge for something to occupy my hands. I was aware of the Doctor moving around behind me and wondered if he would come stand next to me.

            “Rose, if you’re talking about last night…”

I spun around, half eager and half terrified to continue this conversation. In fact, I hadn’t been intending to bring up last night just now, but seeing as he had… I pulled up short at the sight of the Doctor standing behind me, a gentle look on his face, his wide, brown eyes gaging my reaction, and attempted not to look like a startled bird when he was standing much closer than I’d anticipated. I failed dismally.

“I shouldn’t have pushed you into that,” I said hastily, with an air of getting the worst over with. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it until after, but you said so right at the start, didn’t you?”

A confused look passed over the Doctor’s face and I hurried to explain.

“You weren’t into it.” I clarified. “No, I get it,” I added quickly, when the Doctor’s eyes widened and his mouth popped open. “I mean, sure, you gave me a good time—just like any bloke backed into a corner by a girl, yeah?” I tried for an airy laugh, but it came out a little hysterical.

“Rose, you don’t underst—”

“Don’t patronize me, Doctor,” I worked to keep my face neutral this time, no need to be childish about these things. “I figured it out; it wasn’t that difficult. I, that is, Past Me, was into you, but you, Past and Present, never wanted anything other than a travelling companion. Last night,” I couldn’t quite meet the Doctor’s eyes as I said this part, but I cleared my throat and pushed forward anyway. “Last night,” I repeated more firmly, “you were willing to do whatever it took to get your companion back, and I just want you to know that even though it didn’t work, I appreciate your sacrifice.”

Brief, business-like, to-the-point. I finished my speech and lifted my chin, determined to act like a grown up no matter what crazy emotions had been pinging around inside my head for the last twelve hours. The Doctor was looking properly gob-smacked at this torrent of information and it took him several seconds before he was able to respond. 

“Er, my sacrifice?” he said after a long moment, and I nodded stiffly, fighting to keep my face blank. The Doctor took a step toward me, bringing our bodies almost into improper contact once more. I took a hasty step backwards and bumped up against the console, a surprised squeak escaping the stern line of my mouth. I could have sworn the Doctor’s lips twitched at this.

“That’s right.” I said briskly. “It was obvious really; you went on about how it was a such a bad idea and all. I mean, what else is a girl to think besides ‘you’re taking one for the team’?”

Another step; and the man was right in front of me once more, leaning forward and placing his long-fingered hands on the console on either side of my hips.

“Rose, there was a reason I didn’t want to kiss you last night,” he said quietly, eyes locked on mine. I tried not to blink, pressing my lips together, determined not to show how much that hurt. My emotions really were a tangled mess right now. The Doctor seemed to be searching my face as he went on. “I didn’t want to kiss you,” he repeated carefully, “not because you’re undesirable, Rose, but because I didn’t want to have that memory of you not wanting me.”

I stared up into the Doctor’s serious brown eyes, trying to understand what he was saying. “But you said it yourself, Doctor, when I travelled with you before, I had feelings for you. So why—?”

“Because the Current You doesn’t know me that way, Rose Tyler, and snogging up against the wall in your bedroom wasn’t going to change things. But, selfish man that I am, I wanted it to. So I let you convince me.” He let out a mocking chuckle. “Not that you had to try very hard.” He was looking hard into my eyes now, as if searching for understanding. “I wanted to hold you, Rose, to feel you want me again, and so I took advantage of you.”

“But you didn’t,” I whispered back, all too aware of his body heat radiating through the light blue dress shirt he wore, the sleeves still rolled up almost to the elbows. “I came on to you! I…I used you.”

“You’re scared, Rose,” he said gently, no trace of animosity in his voice. “You’re lost and confused, and I’m asking you to take a massive amount of things on faith when it comes to me. I don’t blame you for wanting to try all avenues when it comes to getting your memories back, but this isn’t one of them.”

“But…” I didn’t have anything to follow that word up with, but as it was, I didn’t need to. The Doctor was suddenly cupping my face with one hand, tenderly brushing his thumb across my cheek. The gesture was so unexpectedly intimate that—despite what had happened between us last night—I felt unable to respond.

“You were right about one thing, Rose Tyler.” And the Doctor’s voice was low, almost husky now. I wet my lips and swallowed hard, unable to voice the “What thing?” that hung in the air between us. He went on. “I never wanted anything other than a companion.”

I nearly physically flinched at that declaration. That stung. Poor Past Me, having her heart broken by falling for a man who must have caused her nothing but trouble. The Doctor’s inscrutable eyes missed nothing, of course, and his fingers stilled against my cheek as he leaned even closer, his voice a breath in my ear.

“I tried to resist you, Rose Tyler, enigmatic shop girl from London. You were only ever supposed to be a silly companion. At best: a mate; at worst: someone I could show off to. You were never supposed to affect me this way. None of the others did. So why were you so different?”

I couldn’t speak. It was as if every word I’d ever known had vanished from my brain. Was he saying what I thought he was saying?  

The look in the Doctor’s eyes was far away, as if he were seeing events from our past together. After a long moment he seemed to come back to himself, gave his head a little shake, and straightened up, reaching to straighten his tie before realizing it was still hanging off a lever somewhere to my left. He reached for it and began to rework an intricate knot with nimble fingers while casting about for his jacket. It was approximately four seconds before he arrived at the same conclusion I did: he didn’t have his jacket because it was still in my room.

“I, er, seem to have misplaced my…uh…”

Yup. Definitely avoiding my eyes now.

“Your jacket’s in my room.” I supplied, watching the way the tips of the Doctor’s ears turned pink.

“Right, yes. Of course it is. Er—”

“Want me to get it for you?” I put in, faintly amused at the sudden tongue-tiedness that had seized the Doctor’s normally eloquent vocal chords.

“If you wouldn’t mind. But Rose,” he called just as I was nearing the hallway that I was 80% certain led to my bedroom, “There’s, uh, something private in my pocket. So…”

He was talking about the note I’d seen last night. He had to be. I’d halted at the doorway when he’d spoken, but refused to turn around at these words; my traitorous blush was sure to give me away if I did.

“No snooping, is that it, Doctor?” I tried for a teasing tone, but wasn’t sure if I succeeded.

“Not that I think you’re the sort to go through other people’s belongs, of course!” He seemed a bit flustered now and I had to fight the urge to spin around and blurt out that he was wrong; apparently I was _exactly_ the sort of person who rifled through things that didn’t belong to me. Guilt welled within my chest and my cheeks flamed. “Only it’s just that,” he paused, seeming to be looking for the right way to phrase something. “There’s something in there that I’m not ready to discuss just now and—”

“I promise to bring your jacket straight back here, no peeking.” I swore, feeling like a fraud at the suppressed sigh of relief that escaped the Doctor’s lips.

“Right. OK then. Thank-you, Rose Tyler. I’ll just, er, be here then.”

I heard him turn away from me back toward the console, probably readying himself to tinker some more, and beat a hasty retreat into the safety of the hallway.

**~OOO~**

            I found my room without incident and entered feeling a tiny bit proud of myself. This ship wasn’t so confusing once a girl got used to it. The smugness faded from my face when my eyes fell upon the brown, pinstriped jacket laying across my bed where I’d left it after getting dressed. I was a terrible liar. The Doctor would know as soon as he saw my face that I’d stolen a glance—more than a glance, a lingering inspection—at his private note. I mean, sure, I couldn’t read it, but that wasn’t really the point, now was it?

            Taking a calming breath, I folded the jacket neatly then hung it over my arm to carry it back to the console room, dreading the confession I’d have to make once I arrived with every step. When I got back, I found the Doctor standing next to the police box doors, peering out the window with a pensive look on his face. As I crossed the room to stand next to him, I wondered what he was thinking so hard about.

            “Ahem…” I cleared my throat delicately, holding out the suit coat with one hand. The Doctor barely glanced at me, a faraway look still in his eyes.

            “Thank-you, Rose Tyler,” he muttered distractedly, eyes drifting back to the small windows that led to the back hall where we were still trapped.

            “Is everything alright, Doctor?” I asked after another stretch of silence.

He didn’t reply, still staring hard enough at the empty passageway that I half-thought his gaze might burn a hold in the glass. After all, what did I know of Time Lord powers? It was then that inspiration struck. Stupid, selfish, Rose! I chided myself internally. Of course! Who else would he be thinking about if not me?

“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” The Doctor cast a questioning glance over his shoulder at me and I elaborated. “Your friend; the one you—that is, we—came here to rescue. Did you see any sign of him when you were looking for me earlier?”

“That’s the thing, Rose; I’ll admit I was in a bit of a panic, trying to find you and not stumble into the line of fire while I did it and all, but I should have realized earlier— _much_ earlier really—but _especially_ when we were searching the compound. Rose, I couldn’t feel him _here_.” He paused, and lifted his fingers to the side of his head. I furrowed my brow and he added, “My people connect to each other on a telepathic level, remember?”

“So…maybe he’s unconscious?” I offered.

The Doctor shook his head, still looking agitated. “Even if he were, there’d still be something. Thinking back, I can’t ever recall having had a mental connection, however vague, to the Acuites’ other prisoner. Rose,” He turned to look at me fully, a haunted look in his eyes. “There are only two reasons that would happen.”

“What do you mean?” I asked quietly. I didn’t like the look on his face.

“Either he’s already dead or…” he trailed off and turned back to the window. I couldn’t help myself, I was stepping forward and placing my hand on the Doctor’s arm almost before I was aware of moving.

“Or?” I prodded gently. The Doctor turned slowly to look down into my eyes, wretchedness etched across his features.

“Or worse, he was never there at all.”

I blinked up at him, confused. “What do you mean? You told me about the message on your psychic paper, right? That had to be him!” The Doctor was shaking his head before I’d finished speaking.

“That’s just the thing Rose, it might not have been. It’s happened before, where other races have contacted me via the psychic paper. Anyone with a significant level of psychic power can use it. I was just so caught up in the moment… It’s been so very long… and I wanted to believe…” he trailed off, looking for a moment so very wistful I wanted to cry. “I was a _fool_!” he finished harshly, breaking the mood with the force of a hammer, and a wall dropped down over the Doctor’s face, masking his inner thoughts once more.

“But they crashed the TARDIS!” I protested, somehow more desperate to prove that the unknown Time Lord existed than the Doctor seemed to be. “You said that they’d need to have Time Lord technology to do that.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong, Rose Tyler. Or more precisely, I’m wrong. Or half wrong, anyway.”

I sent him a Look and he hastened to clarify his point.

“That is, when we landed on the Acuite planet the first time, I couldn’t figure out any other way that they’d have been able to pull the TARDIS out of the Time Stream; it should have been impossible, being a Time Travelling Machine and all. But there was another way. And ohhh….” His eyes widened with sudden understanding. “Oh, it was a _brilliant_ plan, Rose.”

I eyed the sudden manic gleam in the Doctor’s eyes and decided that I didn’t like it. “Doctor…”

“Oh but they were _clever_!” he announced loudly, startling me when he abruptly pushed away from the door and went striding up the ramp toward the console, his long legs soon leaving me far behind. “And I was so abysmally _thick_!” He started punching random buttons with feverish zeal. “Mr. Thick Thickity Thickface, from Thicktown, Thickania!”

“What are you going on about, Doctor?” I demanded at last, having jogged up the grated ramp to see if the Doctor’s sudden pummeling of the console controls was doing anything useful—such as, say, getting us out of here.

He whirled around so fast I nearly smacked right into his chest. He didn’t seem to notice. “I was so completely arrogant, never thinking that they could do it. But they did, Rose. They did!”

“Doctor!” I grabbed his arm and hulled him to a halt, just as he started to pace off again. He stumbled, then finally seemed to come out of his stress-induced daze. “Stop.” I ordered. “Breathe. Explain.”

It took several moments for the Doctor to comply, but at last his wild eyes locked onto mine and he nodded slowly. “All this time I was thinking that the _Acuites_ caused the TARDIS to crash, but I was missing the bigger picture. The Beta 5 Nebula is empty for a reason, Rose. And I didn’t receive the psychic plea for help until _after_ we’d crashed. Don’t you see?” He seemed frustrated at my lack of comprehension and rushed on. “The Beta 5 Nebula is a quarantined area of the cosmos, no one is supposed to build there. Everyone was warned away by the Shadow Proclamation in 1286, due to hazardous energy fields warping the flow of deep space. Very complicated, very dangerous. Makes for generally uninhabitable living conditions unless you like the idea of spontaneous black holes appearing in your backyard. But the Acuites would have known that when they set up shop, so why stay?”  

He paused a beat, as if waiting for me to jump in with a heartfelt, intensely intellectual reason, and then blazed forward with his explanation. “ _Because_ , Rose Tyler, the Acumen is Intelligence personified—well, in so much as a whirling column of smoke can be a person. But the point, Rose, is that by concentrating their collective psyches in the compound, stimulated and amplified by the aide of the Acumen itself, they’d be able to put psychic feelers out into the universe at large, which means that they’d be able to tell when a part of the Nebula was growing too unstable for them to exist. They’d be able to pack up and move before their compound was in any danger, making it the perfect place to hide out. Who’d go looking for you in the bottom of a spatial sink-hole?”

            The Doctor was a little flushed and out of breath from his rant and I seized the opportunity to get a word in edgewise. “Alright, so with their combined consciousness the Acuites are the only beings who can survive in the Beta 5 Nebula, right?” I allowed the Doctor to nod, but pressed on before he could start up again. “Then how did they pull in the TARDIS?”

            “Kismet?” the Doctor offered.

            “Excuse me?” I felt my cheeks heat and my eyes snap automatically up to where the Doctors thin lips had quirked slightly. He cleared his throat and repeated himself more clearly.

            “Kis-met. The Turkish would say it was the ‘will of god’, but for all intents and purposes it means Fate.”

            “If this is Fate’s idea of a funny joke I want a word her boss.” I muttered darkly and the Doctor grinned more fully.

            “Honestly, Rose, I’m more inclined to believe that it was a simple matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The TARDIS normally passes through all disturbances in space too quickly for anything to affect her, but with her being controlled on a halfway psychic plane she was likely a beacon in the night to the Acumen when we were passing by. Add in the Acuites messing about with the local psychic vibes and it seems most likely that the crash was as accidental as it was inevitable.”

            “And the missing Time Lord?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around all this new information. “How did that come into play?”

            The Doctor sighed deeply. “As I said, that was the Acuites’ clever ploy. Remember how it took several days after we escaped before the message came through?”

I nodded, even though I couldn’t remember that specific detail. “So?”

“When we first encountered the Acumen in the Sanctuary of the compound I told you that I could feel it pulling at my mind.” I fought back a shudder and hugged my arms around myself; I would never forget the feeling of having something invade my most private thoughts, plundering feelings and memories with reckless abandon. The Doctor eyed me as if he knew what I was thinking. “The only explanation I can formulate that fits all the pieces of the puzzle is that the Acumen was able to syphon off just enough of my memories relating to the Time War to create the trap that so effectively lured me—and, by extension, you—back in.”

And there it was: the reason for all the chaos that had so disrupted our lives. The question now was this:

“So what are we going to do about it?” I asked, taking a firm step forward to indicate that I wasn’t going to abandon him—or allow him to force me to sit this out.

There was silence as the Doctor regarded me from next to the console. At last he spoke. “ _We_ are going to do nothing. Rose,” he spoke over my rising protests, rightfully expecting I wouldn’t take this lightly. “It’s only been a little over two days, and you’re still so mentally fragile; you don’t remember anything! How can you expect me to let you leave the TARDIS when you’re safest within these walls?”

“And how can you expect me to just let you waltz out there and confront an army alone?!” I countered, glaring back at him.

“Rose—”

“Don’t leave me behind again!” I begged. Then added in a softer voice, “Please…I want you safe, my Doctor…”

The words came without thought or invitation, but their effect on the Doctor was instantaneous. He went utterly still, his face paling.

“Doctor?” I asked at once, taking a step toward him with a hand outstretched. “Are you—?”

“Rose,” he croaked, still looking stunned.

“What?” I cried, suddenly seized with a desperation to _do something_. “What is it?”

“You’ve said those words to me before.”

**~OOO~**

***falls over* Oh my god, this chapter was a killer! But I hope it explained some things. :) I’m so grateful as always to my wonderful readers, especially those who take the time to review. It means the world to me. That goes double for those who’ve told me they don’t review often. (I’m like you, I often fall prey to lurking instead of commenting. ;) The story is reaching the halfway point kiddies! See you on the flip side!**


	17. Chapter 17

**Surprise! Just over a week and I’ve already got another chapter for you, lovelies! The last two chapters were like getting blood from a stone, but his one practically wrote itself. ;)**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 17 -

            I stared at the Doctor in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

            Transfixed, I watched as the paleness in the Doctor’s face slowly faded and colour returned to his cheeks. Still he said nothing, though his brown eyes were huge as he continued to goggle at me. I could practically hear the gears turning in his head.

            “Rose, the last time you said those words to me…” Abruptly, he stepped right up to me and took my face in his large hands, ignoring the way I lurched back, trying to pull free. Instead, he looked hard into my eyes, as if searching for something. “The last time…” he muttered faintly, probably not even aware of the words he was speaking, so intent was his gaze on mine. I squirmed uncomfortably.

            “Doctor, stop it,” I cut across him, trying to step away. He refused to let me go. Locked into place and forced to meet the Doctor’s penetrating gaze, I suddenly found it hard to breathe. He just looked so completely startled that I was suddenly and absolutely afraid.

            For all that he was looking at me hard enough to memorize every feature, it seemed to take an age for the Doctor to really see the expression on my face. When he finally noticed the tense look I was wearing, he loosened his grip on my head and lowered his hands to my arms, gently holding me in front of him. “Rose,” he said at last, still in that same dazed sort of voice, “Don’t you understand?”

            I tugged out of his loose hold and took a step backwards, bumping against the safety railing that encircled the console platform. “Obviously not, Doctor,” I snapped, fear and confusion coming out in a voice brittle as glass. “And considering the past few days, I think you’d better start explainin’ before you go grabbin’ at my head again.”

            A few feet away now, I watched as the Doctor dropped his hands to his sides, looking both agitated and slightly lost. “Right,” he muttered distractedly. “Sorry. That was… inappropriate.”

            I eyed him as he cast about the room, looking as if he hoped a clear, well-crafted explanation would fall out of the TARDIS ceiling. After another strained silence I prompted him quietly, “Doctor, what did those words mean to you?”

            He’d turned back toward the console controls, his hands hovering over buttons and levers though not actually doing anything, and I was inclined to think that he craved the simplicity of the complex machine to the complexity of the simple explanation I was asking for. I watched the way his shoulders tensed and his lean body stiffened at my voice, and eventually he faced me again, a haunted look in his eyes.

            “Bad Wolf,” he said at last, and I frowned, a shiver shuddering down my spine.

            “That’s… those are the words I…”

            “Yes, Rose Tyler. Those two words. Just two words. By themselves so very inconsequential, but place them together and the balance of Time and Space was yours to command.”

            I nearly took a step back at the intensity in his wide eyes. “What are you going on about, Doctor?”

            “You told me that the last time—or first time, considering—you heard those words a man in a leather jacket spoke them to you.”

            My knees were starting to tremble with the effort of remaining standing, appearing strong and unaffected by the Doctor’s relentless speech. Why was it that everything he was saying suddenly felt so very significant? As if my understanding the reason behind these words was the key to something vital…

“Yeah, so…?”

            “Was that the only time you can remember seeing that man? In your dream?” He continued peppering me with questions, watching my face intently for my reaction. “Are you _sure_ you can’t recall seeing him before? In real life? Ever? Even once?”

            I started to shake my head, feeling the headache that had been biding its time behind my eyes suddenly flare up with merry ferocity. Then I stopped. I _had_ had flashes of the man since my dream. My cheeks heated instantly. I couldn’t confess exactly _when_ those flashes had occurred… Could I?

            “Rose?” the Doctor pressed, his sharp eyes having noticed the hesitation on my face. “Did you remember something? This is very important.”

            Abruptly I felt dizzy and had to stumble across the floor toward the jump seat, using the railing for balance. “I…”

            The Doctor was right at my heels as I collapsed onto the battered chair, as if he thought the memory would slip through the cracks if he weren’t right next to me when I confessed it. “Take your time, Rose. Think hard. Tall man, poncey leather coat, ears that could put Dumbo to shame?”

            “There was… there was one other time...since then…” I admitted slowly, feeling my face flame even as I did so. The Doctor’s eyes lit up and he leaned closer expectantly.

            “Yes? When was it? What were you doing?” He was so anxious now that he was practically falling into my lap. “Any detail, no matter how insignificant, could be the key to getting the rest of your memories back.”

            I looked away, embarrassed, and muttered, “Why’s he so important anyway, Doctor? He’s just a man I saw in a dream once.”

            At this, the Doctor seemed to deflate a little. He rallied almost at once, however, and fixed me with look I couldn’t quite describe. “Rose, when you saw that man, can you tell me how you felt?”

            I considered the question, seeing again in my mind’s eye the way anger had radiated off the man, and yet I’d somehow known that he wouldn’t harm me. “At first I was… afraid.” I began hesitantly; flicking my eyes up to the Doctor’s face to see if that meant something. He was watching me with a closed expression so I went on. “He was so… so _angry_. Doctor, it felt like he was so full of hatred that the smallest spark would cause him to explode.”

            He nodded, face neutral. “You feared him,” he repeated, and it looked as if the words left a sour taste in the Doctor’s mouth.

            “No,” I said quickly, wanting to erase that look from his face. “I mean, yeah, at first, but honestly, the feeling didn’t last long. The thing was, he kinda felt… familiar. Mad, huh? I mean, how can a figment of my imagination be familiar?” I laughed, the sound dying away at the look on the Doctor’s face.

            “Familiar how, Rose?”

            I could see the way he was fighting to keep a neutral tone, the way the stress in his body was coiling in the way he’d curled his long fingers into tight fists on his lap, and wondered again why this was so important. “I dunno. His eyes, I guess. They were this sort of piercing, ice blue. And when I looked into them…” I paused for a moment, the dream memory playing itself across my mind again. “It was as if I knew him. As if he _wanted_ me to know him.”

            “And the other time you remembered him?” the Doctor asked quietly, his brown eyes, wide and penetrating, were as gentle as the Dream Man’s eyes had been angry. I ducked my head, feeling both self-conscious and absurdly shy.

            “Las’ night,” I mumbled, and waited in silence for the Doctor to cotton on.

            For a self-professed “brilliant” man, it took several long seconds following his confused mutter of: “Last night? When…?” before he seemed to choke on his own words. “Ohhhh. Oh, you mean when…er…” He cleared his throat and tried again. “When you…that is, when I… er, we were—”

            “In my room,” I supplied, utterly unable to look him in the eye now. “I didn’t want to tell you, I mean, how rubbish is that—flashing back about another bloke when you’re… um, involved with someone else?” _Just let it go, Doctor. Please. Haven’t we embarrassed ourselves enough this morning with last night’s play-by-play?_

            “Er, when…exactly?”

            I couldn’t help looking at him then; my head popping up and my mouth dropping open in incredulity. _When exactly?_ Was he actually asking me to tell him which particular part of our desperate snog had conjured up images of Mr. Leather Coat?

            When I whipped around to look at him, I found the Doctor scrutinizing my face innocently, apparently waiting with baited breath for me to recount the flashes of my dream. He didn’t seem the slightest bit embarrassed about asking for this information so directly either. Maybe that was a Time Lord thing, not so tied to silly emotions like mortification or tact or the like.

            “I…”

_Oh god, I can’t do this! I have to do this. Come on Rose, grow up and just tell him. Clinical and to-the-point, no need to get all twitchy like you’re back in primary school._

My head buzzed with internal conflicts and I felt my heart rate leap into a zone that likely wasn’t very good for my health. All at once I felt a warm weight settle over my hands, stilling my nervous fingers from where I’d been knotting them together agitatedly in my lap. I opened my eyes—not even realizing that I’d been squeezing them shut—and saw that the Doctor had placed his hand over mine and was watching me with a kind look in his eyes.

            “I—I touched your jacket,” blurted out quickly, before I could lose my nerve. “An’ for a moment I thought I was holding onto a different type of coat. His coat.” There was no need to clarify who I was talking about, the Doctor knew. He nodded encouragingly.

            “Your mind selected a subconscious memory and inserted it over reality. It’s not so uncommon as you might think, Rose, especially when emotions are… er, heightened.” He cleared his throat a little, but his hand stayed over mine. Steady. Calm. “Was that the only time?”

            _That was the easy one_ , I wanted to say. _The one where I didn’t have to admit to launching myself at your body and grabbing your hair in a fit of passion_. Instead, I took a deep breath and forced myself to say, “It happened a second time.”

            “What did you see that time?” the Doctor prompted gently. “Was he different or the same?”

            “I didn’t really see _him_ ,” I admitted, finally meeting the Doctor’s eyes. “I mean, not in the way you’re thinkin’ and all. It was just that when I…” I cleared my throat as my face appeared to grow even hotter—if that was even humanly possible. “When I…touched your hair…” My voice trailed off as I realized I’d unconsciously lifted my hand and run my fingertips lightly down the side of the Doctor’s temple. 

I felt a faint shudder ripple through his body at this, and when I met his gaze the Doctor was staring back at me wide-eyed, looking somewhere between startled and aroused. His lips were parted, as if he’d been about to say something and my gesture had stunned him into silence. I yanked my hand away from the Doctor’s head and clamped my free hand over top of it, as if to hold it back from going rouge a second time.

“I—I mean, for a second I thought that your hairstyle was different—like his, all short and bristly an’ stuff!” I couldn’t look at the Doctor now. I’d just been caressing his face as if we were lovers! Of course, I’d been doing a lot more to his face—and other parts of him—last night, but that was neither here nor there at the moment.

            “Rose…” came the Doctor’s voice beside me, quiet and careful. He sounded just the slightest bit unsteady though, as if he was working internally to master whatever impulse had risen at my unexpected touch.

            “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have— I don’t—,” I muttered, hunching forward over my lap, horrified eyes on my traitorous hands and apparently unable to form a complete sentence if my life depended on it. “Anyway, that’s it. That’s all, I swear. Nothin’ else—!”

            “Rose!”

            Hands settled on my shoulders and gently tugged my body until I complied, turning back toward him. The Doctor had a soft smile on his face, as if soothing a startled bird. “Thaaaat’s it, just look at me, Rose. There you go…”

            I eyed him suspiciously, unable to let it go. “I shouldn’t have—with your head an’ all. I mean, we just discussed our relationship, or companionship or wha’ever; an’ after I went off on you for—”

            “Rose, just stop,” he interrupted firmly. “No apologies, no excuses. Just stop, alright?” Still his voice was gentle, quiet, and his warm brown eyes held mine. He didn’t look away until I finally shut my mouth and gave a tiny nod. “Now then, two flashes of the mystery man from your dream, right?”

            The Doctor’s tone was business-like, yet cheery, and I knew that he was doing his best to act like my touch hadn’t affected him for my sake. I swallowed hard and took a steadying breath, trying to pull myself together. This man was evidently very important to the Doctor, and if he was important to the Doctor, he was important to me; which meant I needed to get over myself and try and sort out the facts.

            “Yeah, coat and hair, s’right.”

            “Don’t you find it strange that when you were engaged in a, er, rather _involved_ activity, that you were thinking of this other man?” the Doctor asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

            “I’m not exactly proud of it or anythin’,” I muttered, glaring at him from behind a permanently red face. Astoundingly, the Doctor’s lips twitched, as if he found my response humorous. The Doctor’s amusement faded under my glare however, and he grew serious again.

            “What if I told you that you weren’t,” he suggested, watching my face carefully. “At least, not really…”

            “Weren’t what? Thinking of another bloke while I was busy trying to pull your clothes off?” I snapped. “Doctor, I know what I saw—that is, what my mind saw. I don’t know why, I guess that dream rattled me more than I thought. It’s not like I was attracted to him or anything…”

            The Doctor didn’t look the least bit offended at my rude retort; instead he looked a little flushed, retracting his hands from my arms with a valiant attempt at casualness. I quickly ran through my rant in my head and colored. Great, now was _so_ not the time to be bringing up my wandering hands.

            “Rose, you told me you were afraid… but _not_ afraid… of the man you saw.” I nodded cautiously and the Doctor went on. “Why weren’t you scared of that man? He was bigger than you, standing there all menacing in the dark, and possessed of an unexplained anger by your account. Why not leave _before_ he was consumed with the golden light?”

            Well when he put it that way, it seemed illogical not to have been utterly terrified. But the truth was, I hadn’t been scared once I’d seen the man’s face and looked into his eyes. Not of him, anyway.

“He…” I started, thinking hard about the dream again. “He reminded me of you.” I flickered my eyes toward the Doctor’s, realizing even as I said the words that they were completely true, I just hadn’t realized it until this very moment. “He seemed to have this capacity for great power, unrestrained and terrible, yet his eyes were so sad. It was as if he’d lost something he could never get back.”

We stared at each other in silence as the Doctor absorbed my words. After an age he said in a low voice, “Think about it, Rose; the look in his eyes, the feeling you got when you saw him… why would any of that remind you so strongly of me?”

“I’ve seen that look in your eyes too, Doctor,” I said at last, and noticed the tiniest crack in the Doctor’s stoic appearance—apparently his mask hadn’t been as good as he’d originally thought. I pressed on, unable to look away now. “When you think I’m not lookin’ you get this look of unimaginable grief on your face. Yet you’re so gentle with me, so kind. It makes me think that your past had some terrible tragedy in it, and it wounded you. You want to know why that man reminded me of you, Doctor?” He nodded mutely, the strain on his face evident now. “The look I saw in his eyes is exactly what I see in yours.”

Silence rang in my ears when I finished speaking. The Doctor sat frozen, as if he’d been expecting a completely different answer than the one I’d given. When he finally spoke, his voice was very quiet. “You’re right, Rose, he did lose something. The most important something. His humanity.”

“How can you—?” I started, confused, but not entirely unexpecting the Doctor’s complete denial of his own pain in favor of the character from my dream.

“But you brought it back, Rose. That man, he was so very full of rage and hate and hopelessness… but then he met you; silly, and infuriating and ridiculously optimistic… and you changed him. You refused to let him give-in to the darkness, even though he fought you on it so many steps of the way. You pulled him out of the pit of black despair and out into the light again.”

I’d never seen the Doctor look so utterly serious before. “You’re talkin’ like you know him, Doctor.”

“I do know him, Rose Tyler. Very well.”

I was aware of my heart beating very fast in my chest now. Somehow I was suddenly very afraid to hear what the Doctor was going to say next. “How…” I choked the word out, as my body started to tremble.

“Haven’t you guessed yet?” His voice was so very calm, and yet the simple question he asked thundered in my ears.

“You’re not makin’ any sense, Doctor.” I whispered, fighting to remain as calm as the Doctor looked. Why should this conversation make me so nervous anyway? “Did I know him before I met you or something?”

“The light, Rose, when he died in front of you…” The Doctor was relentless now, pressing on as he stared me down with his penetrating gaze, waiting for the pieces to fit together.

“How did you—? I mean, I never said he died… only he was surrounded by that gold light…”

“He was regenerating, Rose, from old man to new man. Your subconscious knew it, but you weren’t ready to understand when the memory came back.”

“Memory? What memory? Doctor, that was _just a dream_!” I pushed to my feet and took a step away from him. “You’re reading too much into this…”

The Doctor was on his feet now too, but he remained next to the battered jump seat. “Rose, _think_!” He sounded upset, and I realized his hands were curled into fists at his sides. When he caught me staring he appeared to forcibly relax his fingers. “You’ve been fighting it for days, but you know who that man is. You _know_!”

He sounded so insistent that I wanted to agree. I really wanted to. But I _couldn’t_ remember the man. I felt tears prick at the backs of my eyes and bit my lip savagely to hold them back. “I don’t know—”

“Rose,” the Doctor said severely, clearly working to remain still. “You had that dream _after_ you returned to the TARDIS. You had flashbacks to the _same man_ when your guard was down in your room. Don’t you see? It’s like the Acuites channeling power from the Acumen to hide themselves. All this time the TARDIS has been trying to guide you back and you haven’t even realized it!”

“You promised to keep your ship out of my head, Doctor,” I retorted in a tremulous voice. “What does the TARDIS have to do with my dreams?”

“She didn’t go into your head on purpose, Rose, you pulled her in.” He took a step forward and I backtracked before realizing the Doctor wasn’t coming toward me, he was striding up to the console, bypassing me almost as if he didn’t notice where I was standing. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before now. It’s so obvious!”

“What’s obvious?” I demanded, feeling a hot tear slip past my guard in my frustration. He wasn’t making any sense! _Again_. “Dumb it down for the stupid human, won’t ya? You talk and talk, Doctor, but you never _say_ anything!”

I didn’t even realize I was shouting until the Doctor spun back around and gaped at me, looking truly startled at the sight of me, red-faced and tear-streaked, glaring back at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said at once, his earlier frenzy having died away, or at least been tamped down for the time being. “You’re right, Rose. I got a bit ahead of myself.”

I sniffled, swallowing back the lump that had risen in my throat. The Doctor crossed the platform to where I stood, hugging my arms tightly around my middle, and glaring defiantly at a spot on his chest for several long seconds, refusing to meet his eye. A bit hesitantly, he reached out and gently rubbed my upper arms, as if soothing an angry cat. I think he might have drawn me into a hug if he hadn’t been concerned that I’d retaliate by clawing his eyes out.

“Please, give me a chance to explain properly?”

His apology sounded sincere, and anyway, my flash of anger had been more at my own inability to keep up with the Doctor’s realizations than from any real irritation with him. I shrugged noncommittally, and saw the Doctor’s lips turn up into an echo of his normal grin.

“Why don’t we go somewhere a little more comfortable?” he offered, stepping back just enough to slid one arm around my back, then guided me across the platform toward one of the branching corridors that led off the console room.

**~OOO~**

He’d brought me back to the little sitting room. I wanted to hold on to my annoyance and frustration with the situation in general, but he’d been right to bring me here: it was hard to feel angry in a small room with nothing in it besides a few pieces of furniture and a crackling fire. The atmosphere was relaxing and I found myself calming down almost as soon as the Doctor had me sat down in front of the fire.

            “Go on, then,” I finally said, gathering that the Doctor planned to sit patiently next to me on the couch until I acknowledged I was ready for the full story. “Explain.”

            The Doctor shifted next to me, angling his knees toward me, and I glanced up through my lashes to see that he looked strangely nervous. Curiosity tickled at the back of my mind and I eyed him inquisitively. Slowly, he reached inside his jacket and I heard a rustle of paper. Instantly I knew that he was going to bring out the letter—what else could it possibly be?—and turned away at once, trying not to look guilty.

            “There’s something I want to show you, Rose,” he started slowly, sounding both nervous and completely calm. “You may not remember this, but the first time you saw this piece of paper I refused to let you see it. Of course you didn’t like that, never one for appreciating secrets, you lot.”

I looked up at the smile in his voice. It was mirrored on the Doctor’s face in quiet happiness as he recalled an event that still evaded me. I felt my heart pick up just a little. Something about the way he was speaking raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The letter was important.

“The thing was, at the time, I wasn’t finished with it. Then, with certain events or the other, I found myself with a lot more alone time to write.” I flickered another glance at him and found the Doctor’s gaze on the dancing fire. “I found I couldn’t put it down after that; after I— after you were—”

It sounded like the words the Doctor was trying to say were stuck in his throat. I raised my head a little higher and looked at him fully now. I could see the tightness in his expression as he fought not to give-in to any trivial emotion. My heart squeezed at the anguish in his eyes and I found my hand reaching across the inches that separated us to rest my palm on the Doctor’s leg in quiet reassurance. He turned to look at me, and some of the harness in his face melted away as I said softly, “I’m here now. I’m safe. You saved me, Doctor.”

“I’ve kept it with me always since that day,” he continued quietly, a sad smile playing about his lips as the firelight glanced off his hair like shattered stardust. “Here.” And he raised a hand to cover the left side of his jacket, over his heart. Or over one of them at least.

I realized then that I’d been holding my breath, and forced my lungs to inhale. “What is it?”

I watched quietly, still barely breathing, as he studied me; his ageless eyes taking in every facet of my face until I felt hypnotized by the reflection of the flames in his pupils. When he replied, his voice was low.

“On Gallifrey we called it—well, it’s a rather long and complicated term, but in English it can be loosely translated to ‘Heart Song’.”

Was it just the light, or had the Doctor’s cheeks tinted red as he explained the note to me?

“An’ what’s that then?” I had striven for a lighthearted response but my voice got stuck in my throat and came out in a whisper. A soft smile played about the Doctor’s mouth now.

“I suppose you might also call it… well… a love letter.”

I felt my mouth drop open in a tiny “O” of shock as I stared at the man beside me with wide eyes. My heart beat against my chest like a panicked bird as I choked out, “A… a what?”

The Doctor reached for my hand then, and encased my trembling fingers in his gentle, callused grip. Slowly, I dragged my gaze from the still-folded letter he held on his lap, and met his eyes. The expression in them was intense. I could see kindness and sympathy and a searing, aching vulnerability.

“You… I—I mean, that’s… I—” My head was a jumble of mismatched thoughts and emotions and I couldn’t seem to make sense of anything. The Doctor’s fingers tightened slightly over mine in concern.

“I was going to wait, Rose,” he said quickly. “I know that this isn’t really the time, what with you trying to sort out how you feel about me, or even to remember the time we spent together.”

I tried to get myself back under control. Everything was just so confusing, it was too much. “So why now?” My question came out in a timid, tremulous voice and I watched as the Doctor’s face grew serious again.

“Because I need you to know that I care for you; that you can trust me with absolute, unflinching, confidence.”

The look in his eyes as he made this declaration bespoke the vitality of my response. And even as I replied, I realized that it was true to every fiber of my being.

“I do trust you, Doctor.” A hand came up to cup my face at this, and I wondered at the intensity of this conversation.  

“If that’s really true, Rose Tyler, then you need to know that I’m never going to test your faith in me more than now.”

“What do you—?” I lifted my eyes to his again, squinting a little in the dimness of the room. The Doctor’s face was grave and his normally warm, brown eyes looked black in the firelight. And then he dropped the bombshell.

“Rose, you need to let me go back inside your head.”

**~OOO~**

I flinched away from him. I didn’t mean to, honestly I didn’t, but the fear from the last two times people had forced their wills on my mind was too deep-rooted for me not to react this way. The Doctor responded instantly, as if he’d been expecting this reaction and had prepared for it.

            “Easy, Rose… I swear on the Citadel of Gallifrey that I won’t do anything unless you give me your express permission.”

             I had backed up against the far side of the little couch before I was aware of moving; across from me, the Doctor had remained where he was, carefully still; his unwavering eyes analyzing my actions. I stared back at him, feeling guilty for the fear that had seized me seconds after claiming to trust the Doctor unconditionally, and dug my fingers into the soft cushion beneath my legs, clinging to it tightly, as if it were the only thing holding me to this planet. The Doctor wisely hurried on with his explanation, guessing correctly that he’d have to make an airtight case for me to allow him to carry out his plan.

            “It won’t be like the last time, Rose,” he said soothingly, working to pacify my anxiety. “I promise. I’ve been thinking about it ever since…well, ever since my first attempt. But I know now what went wrong last time—at least, I have a very strong theory—and I think we could have a reasonable chance at restoring your memories if we tried again.”

            “Why?” I asked cautiously. “What makes you so sure that this time will be different?” I worked to relax my tightly wound muscles, fighting not to spring up off the couch and bolt. I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I trusted the Doctor; that feeling had been growing inside me ever since I’d woken up to the sight of him in the white prison cell, but what he was asking to do…

“Remember how I told you the Acuites were able to hide their presence here in the Beta 5 Nebula?” I nodded once, and the Doctor went on. “It gave me an idea. They channeled their power through the Acumen amplifying their psychic net into the universe, so why couldn’t I do the same?”

“What do you mean? There’s just one of you, Doctor, who’re you going to use as a conduit?” I’d managed to unclamp my fingers from the cushion and sit up properly again. I realized I’d even leaned toward the Doctor as he was speaking, human curiosity taking the place of fear. Mostly.

“I don’t need another Time Lord to channel, Rose,” he said with half a smile. “I’ve got something much better. Can you guess what it is?”

I studied his face for a long moment, considering his words. No other Time Lords to connect with, no huge psychic force to— Hold on, yes, there was! He’d mentioned it over and over to me, hadn’t he? When I lifted my eyes back to the Doctor’s face, I could tell by his smile that he’d known I would figure it out this time.

“The TARDIS?” I clarified, casting a glance around the sitting room. The Doctor nodded. “But there’s still just one of you,” I protested. “Wouldn’t it be dangerous? I mean, opening yourself up to that sort of psychic link—?” I broke off, when the Doctor scooted a few inches closer to where I now sat and took my hands gently in his.

“Yes,” he said quietly, the smile vanished from his lips now. “I won’t pretend that this will be easy, and I won’t lie to you and promise that it will work; though that’s not to say that I’m not highly confident in our chance of success, because I am, otherwise I wouldn’t have suggested it at all, Rose.”

“But it’ll just be you, Doctor…” I said again, unable to let it go. My fingers tightened unconsciously around his, though the Doctor gave no indication that my grip was uncomfortable. “What if it’s too much? What if you get hurt or—?” _Or what if you die?_ I couldn’t bring myself to give voice to the end of that sentence; it would make the possibility too real.

“Don’t you understand yet, Rose?” At the Doctor’s question I looked at him again. He wasn’t smiling, but the look in his eyes was soft. “I would do anything if it meant saving you. You gave my life meaning again, when I was so very beyond hope. You saw the good in me when I was too bitter at the universe, and the man I’d become, to believe that I could ever be anything other than a Destroyer of Worlds. _You_ , Rose.” And he paused then, to gently extract one big hand from where I clung to him and tenderly brush a lock of my hair behind my ear. “If it meant sacrificing myself in order to get you home whole and safe, I would do it without question.”

Something about the things the Doctor had said were nudging at the back of my mind. They felt familiar somehow. Then it clicked.

“That’s what you said about him,” I breathed, as realization hit and I felt my eyebrows draw together in confusion. Across from me, the Doctor held my gaze, unblinking, as if he were waiting for something. “That man,” I began hesitantly, trying to piece together the puzzle in my mind, “the one from my dream, you said he died.”

The Doctor studied me for a moment before answering. “In a way he did. Everything he was died; and a new man was created in his place.”

“Wait,” I said slowly, something not quite fitting together in my head. “That’s not exactly right though, is it? You used another word… Regen… Regena…?”

“Regeneration?” the Doctor supplied, and I nodded. When the Doctor didn’t say anything else I began to feel a bit dim; as if I had all the clues to a mystery laid out on a table in front of me but I kept putting them in the wrong order so the solution wasn’t making any sense.

As I watched the dying flames lick at a charred log, I decided to go through everything I knew about the dream man one more time: both times I’d seen him my mental guard had been compromised—either lost in sleep or distracted by more… well, _physical_ activities, the way the Doctor seemed to know more about the man in the leather coat than I did—considering it had been _my_ dream, the way he talked about the man as if he’d had similar—or even the _same_ —experiences as he had…

Then another thought materialized in my mind and I found myself voicing it before I could properly think it through.

“What happened to the new man? If he wasn’t just a figment of my imagination and I actually knew him… well, before… Where did he go? I mean, if I was so important in changing his life, why did he leave me after he… um, _regenerated_?” The word still felt foreign in my mouth, still like “death”. The feeling of anger and sadness and loss that had flooded over me in my dream when the man in the leather coat had been consumed by the glittering gold light was as vivid as ever.

“He didn’t leave you, Rose.”

Something about the way the Doctor said these quiet words raised the hairs on the back of my neck and goose bumps on my arms. And then the Doctor’s words from earlier back in the console room came echoing back to me: “ _Rose,_ _think_! _You’ve been fighting it for days, but you know who that man is. You_ _know_!”

And then I did know.

I twisted back to face the Doctor as the shock of sudden realization coursed through my veins like ice. “You—”

“New face, new body…” he gestured vaguely at his chest and I felt my heart give a thump of recognition. “New outside, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor continued, eyeing me carefully as I tried to absorb this new reality. “But same inside.” And he reached out to catch my hand in his, and then gently placed my palm over his hearts. I could feel their light, quick beats under either end of my splayed fingers.

“You’re him.” I breathed at last. The Doctor nodded gravely. “That’s why when we—I mean, it wasn’t another guy I was thinkin’ about then, not really…” The edge of the Doctor’s lips quirked upward and he shook his head.

“Regeneration is a little trick Time Lords have, Rose. It’s a way to cheat death, one of the reasons we live so long. But the price of such a gift comes at a cost: we lose nearly everything that makes us who we were. Personality is altered, appearance is overhauled, attitude and reactions and even hobbies can turn out completely different than they were before. My mind is the same but that’s about it.”

The Doctor spoke about losing himself lightly, as if he’d gone through the process enough times in his life that it was almost commonplace. Then I remembered a sliver of conversation that felt years old: the Doctor’s age. He’d told me he was over 900. In the course of his life he must have gone through many regenerations. The thought was both terrifying and desperately sad.

“If I knew you with your old face,” I began slowly, trying to word my question tactfully, “why do I now know you with this one? What happened? I mean, why did you have to—?”

The smile on the Doctor’s face grew a little wistful. “You took on a great burden to save me from an unwinnable fight,” he said seriously, threading his fingers through mine on his lap. I was now sitting right next to him again. “But the strain of rescuing me would have killed you.”

I felt a shiver judder down my spine as the Doctor spoke. “You sacrificed your life for mine?” The backs of my eyes pricked hotly and I blinked hard.

“And I would do it again tomorrow.” The utter resolution in the vow rippled through me with an almost electric charge.

“Doctor…”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say. How did you repay someone who gave up their existence, everything they were, to save you? Then my flicking eyes fell on the forgotten letter that slid halfway off the Doctor’s knees during our conversation.

“Read it to me?” I asked softly, eyes on my lap. Across from me the Doctor’s expression turned a little confused.

“What?”

“The letter,” I amended, firmly avoiding his eyes now. “I… I saw it last night. I didn’t mean to go through your things,” I added hastily, lifting my head to look urgently into the Doctor’s eyes, not wanting him to think any less of me, especially considering what he’d just confessed. “It’s just that you left your jacket behind in my room an’ I had it… um… beside me on…” I felt my cheeks heat again. Was I going to have to admit to sleeping snuggled up with his jacket now, too? The look on the Doctor’s face suggested that he had an idea of where I’d had his coat, but he could tell that I was embarrassed about it so had chosen not to mention it. “Anyway,” I rushed on, “I felt something in your pocket, an’ I took it out to see what it was an’—why are you laughing?”

I stared agog as the Doctor swallowed back another slightly-incredulous chuckle before answering, the tension in the room diffusing with his amusement. “Rose, you look absolutely wretched! I suppose you think you were supposed to help your curiosity—forgetting everything you’ve been through these past few days, and have been suffering terribly over your lack of self-control since last night, am I right?” He raised an eyebrow when my expression of self-loathing didn’t change. “Did you think I’d be so angry with you?”

“Well, you were just sayin’ how you didn’t want me to look in your pockets earlier an’ all. And there I was, promising I wouldn’t when I already had! And then you told me what that letter was an’ what you did for me an’—”

“Rose,” he interrupted, and I bit my lip to stop the torrent of words spilling out of my mouth. “The only reason I didn’t want you to see the letter earlier was because I didn’t think you were ready to hear what it was. Of course I’m not upset with you; I wrote this letter for you in the first place.”

I watched as he released my hands and picked up the folded stationary, carefully opening it and smoothing the paper out across his lap. The familiar circular symbols glittered dully as the firelight caught the gold ink and I found myself staring again at the separated gathering of lines and circles at the top of the page. Tentatively I pointed to it with one finger.

“That one felt familiar to me when I saw it las’ night.”

The Doctor’s face lit up at my comment and he grinned at me. “That would be because that’s your name, Rose. I showed you how to write it in Gallifreyan once.”

“Oh.” I felt a smile tug at my own lips.

“Would you like me to read it to you now?”

I nodded, feeling suddenly shy. I’d never had anyone write me a love letter before, and the ancient yet timeless ritual of the written word swirled around me like falling stars. Then the Doctor slipped on his glasses and began to read, and I didn’t say anything for a long time.

At first it was a little jarring to realize that the Doctor wasn’t reading the letter in English, but then I realized that he had to be speaking Gallifreyan, letting the thoughts and feelings he had for me spill across the page and out from his lips in a liquid, almost musical tone, until I felt heady with emotion despite not being able to understand the words directly.

He read for a long time, and I realized that the letter had been longer than I’d originally thought. When at last the Doctor stopped speaking I knew what I had to do. I waited until he lowered the fine paper and lifted his eyes to mine, then took a deep breath.

“That was beautiful, Doctor. Thank-you.” He pressed the letter into my palm and I clutched it to my chest, trying to muster the courage for what I was going to do next. “Doctor?”

“Yes, Rose?” He still had ahold of one of my hands and was absently rubbing his thumb over the inside of my wrist.

“I’ll do it.” The thumb stilled.

“Rose?”

“I’ll let you try again; go inside my mind and try an’ make me remember.” A hand came up to frame my face and I fought to hold on to the determination I’d gathered while listening to the Doctor read.

“Are you sure, Rose?” he asked softly, forcing me to meet his eyes, searching my face for the slightest hint of uncertainty. I nodded against his calloused palm.

“I want to remember, Doctor. All the things you did for me, what would have pushed me to nearly die trying save you… All the things we did together, an’ places we travelled. An’ even why you can’t stomach my mum’s cookin’…” A genuine smile broke through as I said these words, and I saw it echoed on the Doctor’s face. “I want to remember _you_ , Doctor.”

For a minute or an hour or a year we just stared into each other’s eyes, it was if Time ceased to be. Then the Doctor finally nodded, and dropped his hand from my cheek.

“Alright. Let’s begin.”

**~OOO~**

**What a journey to get them to this moment when Rose is finally ready let the Doctor back into her heart…and head. See you next chapter: same Who time, same Who channel. ;)**

**Reviewers! I love you, and you, and you, and you, and… and all of you!**


	18. Chapter 18

**We’re winding down now, dear readers. I hope this chapter resolves some things for you. Not that everything is taken care of, because otherwise there’d be no need for another chapter, would there? ;)**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 18 -

            The Doctor gently took the letter out of my hands and set it to the side, then he turned back to me and met my gaze steadily, as if looking for an ounce of hesitation. I straightened my shoulders and lifted my chin, trying to hold on to the bravery I’d felt when I’d given my permission a few minutes ago. It wasn’t easy.

“How will it work?” I asked quietly, when the Doctor continued to sit motionless across from me. “Only, Doctor, I don’t think I can handle it if it’s as—as _invasive_ as before…”

The Doctor’s expression didn’t change; he remained as serious as I could ever remember seeing him. “I can’t promise that it won’t be, Rose,” he said at last, and I took a deep breath, knotting my fingers together on my lap. “I can only tell you that I have a fairly firm grasp of the mechanics of what we’re going to attempt. I don’t know how your mind will react, only that I’ll be as careful and as gentle as I can. You will need to do your best not to fight me when I try and connect with you this time though, the fewer mental blocks you throw up the easier it will be for the TARDIS to try and break through.”

I took another breath, closing my eyes and working to keep my heart rate normal. _Don’t panic, Rose. You can do this._ I took another shaky breath and raised my head again. “Ok,” I focused on the warmth in the Doctor’s brown eyes, the promise within them. “Just tell me what to do.”

“Close your eyes and try to relax; think about a happy memory.”

In certain situations closing your eyes helps you to stay calm, focused, become peaceful; but in others, giving up the ability to control your surroundings through sight only increases your anxiety. This felt very much like the later. Still, I dutifully tried to recall a time I’d felt content. I thought about my mum, about Mickey, even about crazy evenings out with Shareen… and yet, all of that was shoved aside when the memory of the Doctor pulling me into his arms in the white room intruded on my consciousness. That shouldn’t have been a happy memory. I’d been traumatized, empty, and so lost… But when I’d seen him, even though I hadn’t known him, just the sensation of being held in his arms had kept me back from the brink.

“Give me your hands,” the Doctor continued, and obediently I held them out in front of me, feeling the Doctor’s long fingers wrap firmly around mine. He settled our linked hands on my lap, his knees brushing up against my own as he shifted closer. “You’re going to start to feel a slight pressure against your mind soon, try not to panic. I’m going to connect with the TARDIS first and then use that link to try and get past the block in your head. If I’m right, since we’re so close to the Acumen physically, the presence of my own memories connected to you, combined with the boost from the TARDIS, should be enough to break through.”

I could feel my breathing speeding up in anticipation and fought to remain calm. “But what about me? Isn’t there anything I can do to help?”

“You’re already doing it, Rose,” the Doctor replied, and in confusion I opened my eyes to frown at him.

“What do you mean?”

The Doctor remained stationary on the couch; his face serene and his eyes closed. “Close your eyes.”

I gaped a little at him. “How do you know I—?”

“Tiny bit psychic, remember?” A tiny smile tugged at the side of his lips and I narrowed my eyes for a moment before closing them again. As if he sensed that I’d done as asked, the Doctor continued speaking. “BAD WOLF, Rose, that’s what you’re doing.”

“You still haven’t told me what that means, Doctor,” I replied, and felt his fingers give mine an affectionate squeeze.

“That’s because you always knew more about that than I did,” I could hear a definite hint of teasing in the Doctor’s voice, but he went on before I could say anything. “Just keep your eyes closed and continue to try and relax; empty your mind, imagine you’re standing in an open space, a place where you feel free and unafraid.”

Around me I could feel a charge in the air, not unlike the feeling just before a big storm. I tried to do as the Doctor asked, picturing an airy field, full of softly waving grasses and a deep blue sky overhead. I imagined sitting in the middle of it, the sun beating on my back and the wind teasing my hair.

“BAD WOLF was your connection to the TARDIS; from a long time ago. I thought I’d taken all the residual energy from the Time Vortex out of you when I regenerated, but when the Acumen attacked your psyche so brutally, you must have instinctively reacted to protect yourself. You wouldn’t have been able to remember it, since the memory of the time you took the Vortex into yourself was wrapped up in a memory of _my_ past self and the Acumen absorbed anything to do with me from your mind, but it couldn’t stop you from accessing the _energy_ because it’s separate from me. It’s connected to the TARDIS which is connected to the whole of Time and Space, and that was so much more powerful than its simple connection to one puny little Time Lord.”

_The air in the meadow crackled now, and I thought I could hear thunder in the distance._ I swallowed and tried to focus on the soothing sound of the Doctor’s explanation.

“Ever since I was able to get you back inside the TARDIS she’s been trying to heal you. However, since you weren’t able to remember why letting the TARDIS form a psychic link with you was a good thing, you rebelled and I had to force her not to push. But on a deeper psychic level you were still connected, and so during times when your mental defenses were lowered, when you weren’t consciously fighting it, you linked automatically.”

_The wind in my mental meadow began to pick up; clouds were starting to roll in and my hair whipped around my face, stinging my cheeks._

I squeezed my eyes shut harder. At the edges of my mind I began to feel a hesitant sort of prodding, like a mental nudge, testing the barriers of my memory. I tensed, automatically trying to pull my hands out of the Doctor’s grip and break the connection that was allowing him into my head. He responded instantly, tightening his hands around mine and refusing to let me go.

“Stop fighting me, Rose.” The Doctor’s voice was firm, insistent, but wavered a little right at the end; I could tell he was locked into the TARDIS now and that the strain of maintaining the psychic link between it and me was taxing him greatly. I tried to relax, but the questioning nudges were growing stronger, more aggressive, and with the increase of sensations in my head came an increase in anxiety. I flinched backwards, both mentally and physically, and the Doctor yanked me back toward his body, panting slightly with exertion, his reprimand this time coming out harshly through gritted teeth. “You need… to stop… _resisting_!”

“I can’t!” I protested, even as I squeezed my eyes shut so tightly that starbursts of light bloomed behind my eyelids. “Doctor, _please_! I’m scared. I—I can’t do this… I can’t… I—”

“You can trust me, Rose.”

The sound of the Doctor’s voice was quiet and infinitely calm, and the simple truth of his statement cut through my wildly spinning emotions until the only thing I was aware of was the sound of my own heart thudding in my ears.

_Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump._

_Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump._

I could trust the Doctor. He’d promised to protect me with his life.

_Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump._

I focused on the warmth of the hands holding mine, on the sound of my own breathing, and tried to block out everything else around me. I was in the meadow now. Nothing could hurt me. The Doctor would keep me safe.

_In the meadow a BOOOOM of thunder shook the ground, and though I was shaking in the midst of the wildly rippling grasses and the vicious wind nearly blew hard enough for me to have trouble keeping upright—_

 —I stopped fighting back.

**~OOO~**

It happened with no warning. One instant I was fighting a throbbing headache, feeling the white-knuckled grip of the Doctor’s hands pinning me to the couch, and the next it was if someone had cut the thread that linked my mind to the physical plane.

I was floating…

_“Rose.”_

I spun around at the sound of my name, my feet lighting softly on the ground. The fireplace, the couch, even the Doctor beside me had faded away, and I was abruptly outside. Except, I wasn’t _really_ outside… Was I?

_“Rose!”_

There wasn’t supposed to be anyone else here in my meadow. This was my haven, my place of solitude. I scanned the field but couldn’t see anyone. All around me the wind howled; a desolate sound of misery and abandonment.

“Hello?” My voice was swallowed up by an abrupt gust of wind and I turned quickly to scan the opposite side of the meadow. “Is anyone there?”

_“Rose, you have to stop fighting me. I can’t get to you.”_

My heart leaped and I twisted around, looking for the owner of the disembodied voice. “Doctor?”

_“Let me in, Rose.”_

“I’m here, Doctor! I’m trying!” The wind threw my hair in my face and I frantically clawed it back. Overhead the sky was turning black. “Doctor, where are you?”

There was silence except for the swishing of the grass and another violent gale blustering past with enough force that this time I _did_ lose my footing and tripped backwards onto the ground. My cry of terror was lost to the stormy sky.

“Doctor, I’m afraid…” I barely mouthed this confession, curling into a ball beneath the twisting fronds of the grass and hugging myself against the chill of the wind. I could feel pressure all around me, building in the back of my head, and fought back panic at the feeling of having someone nosing around my mind again. I couldn’t let it happen. Not again.

And yet…

“Please…” I whispered to the ground, closing my eyes and tucking my head closer to my chest, heedless of the dirt grinding into my hair as I did so. “Please, Doctor… Help me…”

All at once I felt warm hands taking hold of me, gently pulling me up off the ground and guiding me back to a sitting position. My eyes fluttered open at this unexpected touch and I tensed, twisting away from their grip and looking wildly around.

The Doctor was next to me, down on one knee and wearing his full brown suit, the long coat he’d had on when I’d first seen him the white room flapped in the wind. His wide, brown eyes were kind and there was a gentle smile on his face. He still had his hands draped loosely around my shoulders, half-supporting my freezing cold frame, as he murmured quietly, “Oh, Rose, those are two words I never refuse.”

I stared at him. It was surreal that he was here, in my fantasy field. Or was it really imaginary? The stormy weather raging around the pair of us felt real enough. I was shaking from the cold and the Doctor’s hands felt solid.

“Doctor…” I breathed, unable to think of anything else to say. “Are you really here?”

“Up you go, Rose,” he said gently, rising gracefully from his knees and drawing me up with him as he went. When we were both standing he pulled me against his chest and simply held me for a long moment, letting me absorb his body heat and acclimate to the fact that we were both really “here”, wherever “here” was.

When I eventually pulled back, I became aware of several things at once. One, the wind had died down some and the clouds had lightened to a deep gray; two, the Doctor was no longer looking at me, but rather over my shoulder; and three, there was a door at the far side the meadow, both near and far away from where we stood, constantly fluctuating in that way that dreams have.

I found myself clinging to the Doctor’s side as I slowly turned toward the Door, and he wrapped one arm around my waist, both holding me to him and promising safety and protection.

“How did you get here?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off the Door. I felt the Doctor’s answer rumble through his chest as he bent his head toward me.

“Strictly speaking I’m _not_ here. Though, to be fair, neither are you. Not really. We’re inside your head, Rose, travelling through your consciousness. This—” he paused to gesture around the meadow with his free hand, which, I realized now, was also holding his sonic screwdriver, “is all a product of your imagination.”

I glanced briefly up at him through my lashes. “But it feels so real!”

The half-smile on the Doctor’s face grew. “Just because it’s inside your head, Rose, why should that make it any less real?” I blinked at him and he turned toward me, gently extracting himself from my hands. “Everything we see here is a product of your own making, Rose. The field is here because you imagined it that way. The storm flared up because you were scared, and it’s fading now because you’ve realized that letting me into your mind isn’t another attack.”

“So right now we’re really still…”

“…sitting inside the TARDIS, like as not snoring away on that daft old sofa.”

I almost smiled at that, but then the Door captured my attention again and all feelings of warmth and calmness seeped away. I could feel the Doctor’s eyes on me as I stared across the field at the Door, which by now had warped and grown into a massive creation of wood and iron, reminiscent of something that I couldn’t quite name yet still sent a thrill of fear through me.

“We have to go through there.” The statement came without thought, yet as the words passed my lips I knew them to be true. We couldn’t stay in the meadow forever, even as the wind died down to a pleasant breeze and the sun finally broke through the dissipating cloud cover.

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed, dropping his arm from around me in order to take my hand.

“I’m afraid,” I confessed, and felt him give my fingers a reassuring squeeze.

“It’s a dangerous business, Rose Tyler, going out your front door…”

I tilted my head to stare up at the him, feeling a tickle of incredulous amusement flicker through me. “Did you just quote The Lord of the Rings?”

The Doctor grinned down at me. “Tolkin was a brilliant man, Rose, and his wisdom is not to be denied.”

“Yeah, well I hope you’re rememberin’ the rest of that line…” I muttered back, turning to the Door again. “‘If you don’t keep your feet…’”

“‘There is no telling where you might be swept off to’,” the Doctor finished, tightening his hand around mine once more. “Don’t worry, Rose, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here beside you and I won’t let you get lost.”

My heartbeat pulsed in my ears and the Door seemed to loom up before me as I took a hesitant step toward it, the Doctor moving to keep pace beside me. I reached out for the heavy iron ring that appeared to be the Door’s only source of “handle”, and gave it a yank with my hand. Then, with an almighty creaking of hinges and groaning of rusty bolts, the Door swung wide, revealing an utterly black passage beyond.

**~OOO~**

            For a long moment the pair of us simply stood there, taking in the yawning corridor, but then something bright wavered way down the hall, lighting the darkness like a match flickering to life. Casting a quick glance at the Doctor beside me, and finding his gaze fastened on the blue light ahead, I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and marched into the hall, towing the Doctor after me.

            As we walked, torches sputtered into existence on the walls, twin sconces on either side of us lighting the way in pairs every few steps we took. Our footsteps echoed off the stone surfaces surrounding us and I had to try very hard not to imagine that I was leading the Doctor and myself into crypt. An agonized creak behind us, followed by a heavy _bang_ , proclaimed the Door sealing us in, and I swallowed back a gasp, clutching the Doctor’s hand more tightly than before.

            “If this is all in my head, why can’t I make it brighter in here?” I asked, frowning at the dim corridor.

            “Your subconscious is overriding your desires,” the Doctor replied promptly, and I glanced up at him as we continued to make our way through the dark.

            “If it’s my head I ought to be the one in control,” I muttered mutinously, and the Doctor’s lips twitched briefly before he grew serious again.

            “You _are_ in control, Rose; only the deepest recesses of your mind have been so damaged that it won’t be easy to regain them.”

            He spoke matter-of-factly, but facts weren’t what I wanted right now. I wanted reassurances, even if they had to be lies. “Tell me it’s gonna be ok, Doctor,” I said, keeping my eyes straight ahead so I wouldn’t have to see the truth in his eyes. “Promise me when I wake up again everything will be normal.”

            Beside me the Doctor was silent, and I knew that he wouldn’t speak unless he could give me a hint of positive news. I could feel his tension in the rigid way he held his body, and how he seemed to have to work not to grip my hand too tightly as we neared the end of the corridor. And then the hallway opened out onto a frighteningly familiar room, and the blue light sharped into focus until I realized we were standing in the Sanctuary of the Acuite compound.

            I jerked up short, pulling the Doctor back and earning a sharp “Rose? What’s the matter?” as he turned to look quickly about the room.

            “I don’t wanna to be here,” I muttered, starting to back into the hall again. “This doesn’t feel right, Doctor.”

            The Doctor looked from me to the Sanctuary and back again. “This is all in your mind, Rose,” he reminded me quietly, “Don’t forget that. Nothing here can hurt you.”

            I took another step back shaking my head slowly; now my arm was stretched taunt as the Doctor had refused to retreat yet hadn’t released my hand either. “It’s not safe here, Doctor. _Please_!” I pulled on his hand again, feeling frantic, like there suddenly wasn’t enough air in the room despite its cavernous space.

            Finally the Doctor did step back toward me, but when I tried to move further into the corridor he tugged me firmly back toward his chest. “Rose, look at me.”

            The Doctor’s fingers were warm around my suddenly freezing cold hand and I tried to concentrate on that instead of the light of the imaginary Acumen flickering across the room.

            “You’ve brought us to this place because it’s important. Something happened here that affected you and you need remember what it was.” The Doctor’s voice was calm and methodical, gently encouraging me to be brave, but the tension underlying his words wasn’t hidden well enough for me to miss it completely; he knew that whatever reason I had for thinking of the Sanctuary, it wasn’t a pleasant one.

            I couldn’t remember what happened here, only that I was currently overwhelmed with a paralyzing fear that nearly drove me to my knees. No, nothing good had happened in this room.

            “I don’t know…” I whispered at last. “Something bad… It… it hurt. Doctor, it hurt so much!” With these words a memory hit, so abrupt and savage in its intensity that I cried out, clutching at the Doctor’s chest blindly.

            “Rose!”

            I was barely aware of the Doctor speaking, calling out to me again as I slid down his body onto the floor like a sack of rocks. Pain. Pain like I couldn’t ever recall feeling, let alone enduring in an endless cycle of agony over and over and over again, pierced through my head with unrelenting fury, and each time it hit I screamed.

            “Rose!” the Doctor shouted again, trying to pry my hands away from where I’d clamped them around my head as I writhed on the ground. “Rose, it’s not real! It’s just a residual echo of the trauma you experienced. Rose, listen to my voice. _It’s not real_. You can stop this. You’re in control. Do it, Rose. Now. _Do it_!”

            I don’t think I’ll ever know where I summoned the strength to obey the Doctor’s command, but the relief that washed over me when the stabbing pain finally ebbed away was nearly enough to make me faint. Blinking tears out of my eyes and panting for air, I stared blankly up at the Doctor’s hard yet anxious expression as he bent over me on the ground. He looked shaken, his features cast in a sickly glow from the mix of light thrown by the torches in the sconces.

            “This is where it happened,” he stated in a cold voice, completely at odds with the gentleness in his hands as he helped me sit up again. “Where the Acuites brought you, after you were left behind.”

            I didn’t answer for a long moment, still trying to catch my breath and make myself believe that I wasn’t being attacked a second time. The Doctor didn’t really appear to be waiting for me to speak though, because he went on without giving me more than a few heartbeats in which to affirm his statement.

            “They sacrificed you to their god without a second thought, pillaging your mind with vicious precision all because of me.”

            “Don’t you dare,” I hissed, reaching out and latching onto the Doctor’s coat with one hand, yanking him down toward me. My voice sounded hoarse from screaming and came out in a whisper. The Doctor broke off and met my tremulous glare with a look of slight surprise.

            “Rose—?”

            “Don’t you _dare_ blame yourself, Doctor,” I repeated, feeling a sudden intensity building behind my words as I spoke. “This isn’t your fault.”

            “Of _course_ it is,” he snapped back, the anger in his voice mixed with a heavy sadness. “I never should have involved you I my life. It was far too dangerous. Just look what I allowed to happen to you, Rose! If I’d left you in that shop basement you wouldn’t be here now.”

            “If you’d left me in that basement I’d have been strangled by Living Plastic!” I shot back. “Besides, you an’ I both know that you’d never have left me behind.”

            “You refused to _be left_ ,” the Doctor muttered darkly, though I could see he conceded my point in the way a tiny smile almost-but-not-quite flit across his lips. Then his eyes widened. “Living Plastic…?” he murmured, staring down at me where I still had my fingers fisted in his coat.

            “Don’t tell me you forgot, Doctor,” I croaked. “Mad mannequins running helter skelter all across London? Possessed arm tried to kill both of us in my living room?”

The grin that split the Doctor’s face at this comment sent a little jolt through me. “How could I forget that night, Rose Tyler? It’s when I first met you. The question is: how could _you_ remember it?”

I blinked at him, momentarily confused. And then it hit me. “That night…” I whispered, “It’s suddenly so clear in my head.” I glanced at the Doctor again, trying to process everything. “Only…” I frowned. “Only it wasn’t you—that is, it wasn’t the current you.”

“I’ll take a proper memory of Past Me over no memory of Current Me,” the Doctor said pleasantly, still grinning down at me.

I felt a hesitant smile break out over my own face as the events from the night when I’d met the Doctor traipsed through my head again, but the euphoria faded quickly. “But I still can’t remember this you,” I said quietly, dropping my hand from the Doctor’s coat to reach up and cup the side of his face. His own smile dimmed slightly as he raised a hand to cover mine for a moment before gently pulling my hand away and clasping it in his own.

“Remembering how we met is a very good sign, Rose. It shows that not everything is lost. Even if you never remember how _this_ face came to be, just knowing that we’re the same man is almost more than I’d dared to hope for.” He tightened his hand around mine then and pulled me to my feet.

I ended up standing very close the Doctor when we were both on our feet again, and without really knowing why, I lifted my hands to place them over his hearts. “I want to remember _this_ you, too,” I said, my eyes cast down as I concentrated on the now-familiar feel of the Doctor’s hearts beneath my fingertips. “This you, Doctor, who was so kind to me when I was scared, an’ who’s given everything to try and restore me.”

I felt the Doctor’s hands settle on my waist as I spoke, the gesture friendly, yet still tugging me lightly toward him until I found myself encased tightly in his arms. I leaned my forehead against the Doctor’s chest and felt his head press against my hair as he spoke.

“I won’t give up, I swear to you, Rose. I won’t stop trying. We can get through this. Together.”

I nodded silently, allowing myself to lean into the Doctor’s embrace for another long moment, closing my eyes and trying to imagine we were anywhere else but locked in the maze of my mind, stumbling around blindly in the vain hope that I’d somehow be strong enough to fight off the thrall of the Acumen and regain my memories.

_But one had come back_ , I reminded myself as I closed my eyes and pressed tighter against the Doctor’s chest. _An’ if one came back the maybe, just maybe…_

“We need to keep moving…” I said at last, pulling back from the way the Doctor’s hand had come up to absently stroke my hair. The sensation of his fingers combing through my hair was both comforting and disconcerting, as if I liked it but wasn’t exactly sure why I should be allowing such a… well, intimate… gesture to take place.

The Doctor let me go at once, only reaching out to take my hand once more as I moved, and together we turned back toward the corridor. Instinctively I knew that the next time we emerged we’d be somewhere else entirely.

**~OOO~**

            I was right. The corridor opened onto the white hallway this time, with its numerous doors stretching out before us. The Doctor and I were standing before a particular door though, its tiny window lit from within. When I pushed up on my tiptoes I could see a spill of blond hair across the blindingly white tiled floor, and instinctively I knew that I was looking at my own body dumped in the prison cell before the Doctor had rescued me.

            “That girl…” I whispered, pressing my fingertips against the glass. I was aware of the Doctor stepping up behind me to peer over my shoulder, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the body sprawled across the floor. It looked dead.

            “It’s just a memory, Rose.”

The Doctor’s voice in my ear was quiet, and I felt him place a hand on my shoulder to remind me that it was in the past, that we were both solid and alive and out of that room. But my eyes were locked on the body and I couldn’t look away.

            “Open the door, Doctor,” I heard myself say lowly, fumbling for the handle even as I spoke. “Open it. We have to get to her…we have to—before… before they come back…” I reached for the handle and grasped it with numb fingers, both pulling and pushing and growing increasingly more frantic when the door refused to budge. “Doctor, you have to open it. Hurry… Open it! Open it—!”

            I was yanking on the handle with both hands when I felt the Doctor wrap his long fingers around mine to still my desperate struggle. “Rose, it’s too late. It’s just a memory, there’s nothing we can do now to change anything. You need to calm down and just let it play out…”

            I did not want to calm down. Didn’t he realize how much danger the girl was in? That if we left her there they’d come back for her again?

And again.

And again…

            “We can’t just leave her there!” My words came out in a choked sob as I leaned into the Doctor’s chest and felt him wrap his arms around me and murmur into my ear.

            “No one can hurt her. It’s over. It’s already happened.”

            His words were meaningless. Platitudes. Couldn’t he see that she was still trapped in the cell? Didn’t he realize that if we didn’t break her out now that we were dooming her to return to the Sanctuary where the Acumen would dig through her brain until there was nothing left?

            “They’re gonna come back…” I whimpered into the Doctor’s jacket, burying my face in his shoulder. “They always came back…”

I felt tears on my cheeks now, my heart breaking inside as I stopped fighting the impossible. How could he expect us to just leave her—me—in that room for the Acuites to come for? But then a familiar buzzing filled the air and I lifted my head to stare at the Doctor through tear-wet lashes. He’d lifted the Sonic and aimed it at the door behind me, and a second long buzz and flash of blue light later a loud _click_ resounded in the empty hall. With a creak, the door swung open.

I could see the girl’s legs—my legs—half curled on the floor from where I’d fallen, and I broke away from the Doctor’s embrace to step toward them. Every inch I moved closer to the white room my legs trembled harder, but I refused to back down. Somehow I knew that I needed to go inside. I could feel the Doctor’s gaze on my back as I crossed the threshold of the cell, and I glanced back at his reassuring expression as I stepped fully into the room.

Just as I met his eyes, the world around me dissolved.

**~OOO~**

            It was absolutely black all around me; the absence of light all the more shocking due to the overly bright white corridor I’d been standing in moments before. Strangely, I could see myself despite there being nothing with which to make my body visible. It was almost as if some inner source shone from within me though, so that when I waved my hands in front of my eyes I could see them as clearly as if I were standing outside in the sunlight.

            “Doctor?” My voice sounded small in the darkness, my pitiful question swallowed up by the oppressing nothingness which surrounded me. I turned slowly on the spot, straining my eyes as if somehow I could _will_ him into being if only I concentrated hard enough. “Are you there?”

            Nothing.

            I was completely and utterly alone.

            The hairs on the back of my neck rose as soon as I completed that thought, and I spun around again, the feeling that I was being watched growing—yet I could see nothing behind me in the dark. It was just me. Alone. And I didn’t know if the thought comforted me or not.

            No Acuites was a plus, but no Doctor was a certainly a negative. Being trapped in a starless space that felt both bigger than the sky and smaller than my bedroom closet didn’t lend itself to helping my rapidly beating heart either.

            “It’s all in my head,” I muttered out loud, to dispel the oppressive silence if not that I actually believed the words. “I can’t be hurt here.”  

But being alone in a sea of nothingness was wearing away on my already taut nerves and I sank to the ground—or whatever it was that I was standing on, drawing my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them as my eyes squeezed shut. Still I continued to chant to myself, speaking my gasping breathing that sounded horribly loud in my ears.

“It’s not real… I can stop this… I’m in control…”

            The darkness didn’t waver.

            And then the sound of footsteps reached my ears.

            My head shot up, heart hammering as I searched the blank space all around me. At first I thought I’d imagined the sound, already going mad trapped in my own head, but then they came again, closer this time, and heavier.

            “W-who’s there?” I called out, crawling onto my knees and preparing to spring to my feet and bolt at the first sign of trouble. “Show yourself!”

            The command was feeble, but for all intents and purposes it had the desired effect. A pair of glowing yellow eyes blinked into existence a few feet from me and I flinched back from them, nearly tripping over my own feet as I scrambled away. A face was fading into being around the eyes, followed by a body, tall and muscled, clad in armor with a wicked-looking sword thrust through the belt at the man’s waist. His expression was a cross between indifferent and cruel, but when his gaze landed on me, a slow, feral, smile unfurled across his face, revealing casually sharp teeth.

            It was Ragalagh.

            I bit back a scream of horror, fighting back the panic that rose swiftly in my chest, threatening to choke me. He couldn’t be here. We were inside the TARDIS where the Doctor had sworn no one could break in. Only…

            Only it didn’t feel like we were in the TARDIS; this empty place, devoid of light and safety and reassurances, felt like the only place in the universe that was truly real. And within it I was trapped with my worst enemy.

            “I see you tried to escape from us, Rose Tyler…”

Ragalagh’s voice was practically a hiss, and I lurched awkwardly back from it. Ragalagh seemed to revel in my obvious terror; he took two long strides toward me, seeming to materialize instantly in front of me. I let out a whimper of fear as I stared up into his glowing yellow eyes.

“You can never leave, human…” Ragalagh said lowly, stroking the hilt of his abruptly sizzling sword, the red electricity winding sinuously about the blade like a living thing. “There is no way out. You will be our prisoner forever. Or until death… which may be sooner than you think, considering the fragility of human minds…”

Somehow I found the presence of mind to stand my ground. Ragalagh wasn’t here, I told myself firmly. He couldn’t be. My broken mind was warping my memories, trying to trap me in a net of hopelessness. I had to fight this.

“No.” The word came out so small that I wasn’t sure Ragalagh heard me, _I_ barely heard me. But he halted his advance to cock his head at me.

“Did you say something, girl?” he growled, narrowing his eyes at me. My sudden spurt of courage was dwindling fast and I fought to master myself.

“I said ‘no’,” I repeated in a louder, if no less shaky, tone of voice. “I’m already out of here; the Doctor rescued me. You don’t exist in this space. I—I’m in control, and I banish you!”

The Acuite General looked almost like he wanted to laugh at my words. “Banish me?” he repeated incredulously. “Child, you are barely out of the flames as it is, cowering inside your Doctor’s box, pretending that you’re safe. Don’t think that this will protect you…”

His words startled me. It sounded liked Ragalagh knew exactly what we were doing inside the TARDIS, but how could he? There was no way in, despite the fact that his people had grounded the Doctor’s ship; so how could he possibly have any idea what was going on inside—

“Oh I know exactly what you’re doing, Rose Tyler, you and your Time Lord; trying to generate enough psychic power to restore your thoughts. But I also know something else… it won’t be enough. One man isn’t meant to channel such power on his own.”

 “How—?” I started, and Ragalagh’s feral grin grew wider.

“You may have a TARDIS, human, but I have legions of soldiers channeling their consciousness through the All-Knowing-One. As soon as you lowered your psychic defenses to let the Doctor in, you left yourself vulnerable to me. And this time I won’t let you go so easily.”

Though Ragalagh’s words chilled me, I summoned everything within me and glared him down. “G-give him back to me.”

Ragalagh eyed me beadily, looking mildly annoyed that I was talking back instead of being properly cowed. “Give _what_ back to you?”

I stepped closer. “You stole him from my head an’ I want him back. He’s a good man; kind, an’ selfless, and full of history. You don’t deserve him… an’ I want him back. All of him. _Right now_!”

I might have imagined it, but I thought for the briefest second that Ragalagh flinched away from the sound of my demand. Quickly I pressed my advantage.

“You had to lower your own metal shields in order to break into my head,” I started, working furiously to suss out exactly what was going on. “Yeah…” I said slowly, eyeing the Acuite consideringly. “You may be here, but none of your mates are, are they?” I made a show of looking pointedly around us and turning up nothing but emptiness. Ragalagh narrowed his eyes into glowing slits.

“They are not strong enough to maintain the link,” he hissed, and I felt a surge of relief shoot through me. I hadn’t been entirely sure until exactly this moment that hordes of mental soldiers _weren’t_ about to burst through the psychic plane and shred my consciousness entirely. Ragalagh’s vanity appeared to be my saving grace.

“See, I don’t think that’s true though,” I mused aloud, walking in a circle around the General while keeping my eyes locked onto his. Ragalagh looked ruffled but said nothing, so I went on, my confidence growing the longer I spoke. “I think that they were smarter than you, they knew fighting against a TARDIS was risky, so who better to send than their arrogant, over-stuffed leader who would go to his death fighting to prove his superiority?”

My insult seemed to enrage Ragalagh and he lurched toward me with a growl of fury. I sidestepped his lunge, missing his clawing hands by inches, and spun to face him again, heart pounding. If I was wrong, if my theory that Ragalagh’s presence in my mind was only that: a presence, nothing corporeal that could actually hurt me while my physical body was protected within the TARDIS, this could have been a huge misstep.

Ragalagh staggered toward me again, but his gait was uneven now, and he nearly stumbled as he drew close. Encouraged, I pressed on.

“Coming into my head while I’m protected by the TARDIS an’ guarded by the Doctor’s consciousness was stupid,” I informed the General. “‘Cause you an’ I both know that it took everything in you just to break through the psychic barriers.”

Ragalagh reached for his sword but I held my ground.

“I’m the one in control here,” I insisted, refusing to show fear as Ragalagh’s sizzling weapon slid free of its casing with a metallic shiver. “You are nothing but a shadow.”

My voice rose strongly, even as Ragalagh raised his sword and took a drunken step toward me, his face mottled red with rage.

“If this is a battle of wills then I challenge you, spokesman for the Acumen, and my demand is the Doctor. All of him, every last tiny thought, every shred, every word he said that you leeched from my mind. Give him back to me. NOW!”

My command echoed around the pair of us in the blackness, resounding off a thousand invisible facets and zinging back past our bodies as if the words I’d shouted had taken the form of physical barbs.

A clatter sounded to my right and I whipped my head toward the noise just in time to see Ragalagh’s sword skitter across the darkness past my feet. When I turned my gaze on the General I found him clenching his teeth, his hands curled into fists at his sides as he fought to remain standing.

“No,” he growled somewhat breathlessly, sounding like it took everything in him to force words past his lips. “You are nothing. You are weak—a _human_.” The word came out like the filthiest curse, and at the same moment Ragalgh dropped to one knee, as if some unseen force had kicked his legs out from under him. I regarded him curiously.

“No.” My voice was confident now, cool; my mind stronger than it had been since Ragalagh had first attacked me. “I am strong. And I am demanding the return of what is rightfully mine.”

Ragalagh was on all fours now, visibly straining to keep his head erect. “Take it!” he spat at last, after several long seconds of silence during which he glared at me with enough hatred to melt iron. “But know that you haven’t won, girl. You may gain your Doctor, but he will still burn!”

With this last pronouncement Ragalagh’s body flickered and then vanished, and I knew that he had returned to his physical form outside the TARDIS, somewhere within the compound. For a long moment I stood alone in the darkness, breathing hard, trying to reign in my suddenly violently trembling body. I may have acted unafraid, but inside I was still petrified. Ragalagh’s last words had sent a shard of ice through my chest.

I didn’t have time to ponder what the statement meant though, because at that moment the darkness around me exploded into brilliant light and I had to throw my arms over my face to shield my eyes from the shine. As the blackness melted away, two words etched themselves across my mind’s eye, followed by the face of a grinning man with tussled hair and warm brown eyes.

“I remember…”

**~OOO~**

            **I know, I know… it took long enough, didn’t it? ;) Whatever will happen now that Rose can finally remember dear, patient, Ten? Guess you’ll just have to read the next chapter to find out!**

**Reviewer Time! *hugs everyone* So many wonderful, kind, thoughtful comments on the last chapter and the story in general. You guys are so sweet! :)**


	19. Chapter 19

**I think you’ll all like this chapter a lot. Good things come to those to wait… ;)**

**~OOO~**

\- Chapter 19 –

            I blinked slowly in the dim room, the low flickering light coming from somewhere off to my left was still hard on my eyes after spending so long in the inky blackness of my own head. Somehow I thought that I’d feel more rested, but instead I was awash in the same sort of grogginess that comes from too little sleep followed by too early a morning. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I took stock of my surroundings. I was draped over the arm of the small couch as if someone had flung me there like an old coat, my head lolled to one side and my eyes felt gritty, as if I’d been out for a while. Who knows, maybe I had. Since I’d begun travelling with the Doctor time had ceased to remain a fixed serious of minutes and hours and become more relative. “Wibbly-wobbly” as the Doctor would say.

With a gasp I jerked upright, and immediately clutched my head, a spike of pain lancing through it. Right, messing about inside my own mind was one thing, but allowing two other consciousnesses to join me—however accidental the extra one had been—hadn’t leant themselves to turning me loose without a few mental bruises. As the pounding eased and then faded away, I blinked at the fire dancing in the grate across from me, trying to remember why I’d sat up so suddenly. My eyes lit on a pair of red Converse trainers sticking out of the shadows on the floor by my feet and my heart gave a lurch.

“Doctor…” My voice was hoarse, a whisper, and I practically fell off the couch in my haste to get to him.

The Doctor was sprawled across the carpet like a felled marionette, his long arms and legs curled haphazardly around his lean frame. The fire sparked off his thick, brown hair, lighting the back of his head like a Cathedral angel and his eyes were closed as if he were asleep. But with Ragalagh’s parting benediction still echoing in my brain, I knew better.

Slowly, I crawled to the Doctor’s side and grabbed his shoulders with trembling hands, giving him a shake. “Doctor?” I called, swallowing back panic when he didn’t so much as bat an eyelash.

No.

This couldn’t be happening.

Not after everything I’d gone through to get back to this point.

“Doctor!” I shouted again, heaving with all my strength and somehow managing to roll his body over onto his back. _Please. Please!_ “Get up, you stupid alien…” I ordered, not even realizing that I’d started to cry until my voice trailed off into a hitching sob.

He looked peaceful. His face was serene, washed in the orangey glow of the flames a few feet away, and I wondered if he would have wanted to go this way, this man who was so quick to put himself in between those he cared about and danger. I supposed from his point of view it was a noble death.

I didn’t think it was noble. I thought that it felt as if someone had given me the moon, and then, just as my fingertips brushed its surface, they’d jerked it back from me again; leaving me alone in the echoing nothingness of eternity.

“You can’t die,” I informed the body displayed before me, my voice low as I struggled for control. “You jus’ can’t. Not after I worked so hard to find my way back to you. Not after everything you sacrificed to save me.”

I reached out and stroked my fingers down the side of the Doctor’s pale face, trailing my hand down to his jaw where it stayed for a long moment, as I tried to will the Doctor to open his eyes, to look up at me with that warm, brown gaze once more.

“Wake up!” I commanded, my hand flying back and cracking hard enough across the Doctor’s cheek to leave a stinging red handprint. I gasped in horror at what I’d just done and yanked my hand back to my chest, clutching it to me with a strangled cry.

“Please…” I whispered after a lengthy silence nearly suffocated me in the tiny room with the cheery firelight. “Please, Doctor… I came back for you…”

Still he didn’t move, and I sat motionless, refusing to believe that he could really be gone. And then it hit me. If he wasn’t _quite_ gone, if he could still hear me… even just on a subconscious level…

“Listen you,” I began, pushing forward from where I’d been curled against the bottom of the couch and clambering onto my knees next to the Doctor. “I haven’t forgotten that trick you lot have, and I think that now would be a really good time to use that card you’ve got up your sleeve, eh?”

 I reached out and distractedly straightened the Doctor’s tie just to give my fluttering hands something to do.

“I promise not to behave like a right child this go around, ok? Even if you pop out of the oven with green hair an’ a penchant for wearing a purple sombrero on your head. You’ll still be _my_ Doctor.” I smiled fondly at the unmoving man before me, my hands stilling on the Doctor’s chest, resting over his hearts. “Go on then… make with the glowmageddon!” I tried for a teasing laugh but the sound got stuck in my throat.

I glared up at the ceiling now. “Fix ‘im!” I shouted at the TARDIS. “I know there’s some sort of mental link between you and him. I know that you love him in your way… Just as you know that I love him… So much… an’ for so long… an’ forever…”

There was a familiar nudge at the edge of my mind, hesitant but kind; and I knew that that the TARDIS was trying to comfort me in her own way.

“Hello, old friend,” I murmured, half a smile on my lips as the TARDIS brushed against my consciousness again, sending a feeling of welcome mixed with distress through me. “Just tell me what to do to save ‘im…” I said softly, leaning over the Doctor once more. “Anythin’, jus’ tell me what to do…”

But I knew there was nothing.

Slowly I bent over the Doctor on the floor, rearranging myself so that I could lay my head against his chest and press my ear against his silent hearts. My blond hair fanned out over his jacket as I reached across his body to wind my fingers through the Doctor’s limp ones, my eyelashes fluttering shut. In the back of my mind I could feel the TARDIS hovering anxiously, like dog whose owner had simply not come home one day.

He’d sacrificed himself so I could be whole again. He’d known that trying to channel so much psychic energy through one person was so much more than simply “risky”, it was tantamount to death. And yet he’d never hesitated. Not even once.

_So this is what a broken heart feels like_ , I thought dully, feeling a piercing ache lance through me, both burning hot and ice cold at the same time. _Goodbye… my Doctor…_

The words drifted across my mind with a deadly calm, all the more painful for the unrelenting truth behind them, and with them, my own sense of awareness faded away… and I knew nothing for a long time…

**~OOO~**

_Thump_.

            My eyelids flickered but didn’t open.

            _Ba-bump_.

            My fingers twitched.

            _Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump_ …

            The sound in my ear was staccato but steady, with an odd sort of echoing behind it…

            _An echo? Why would there be an echo?_ I wondered vaguely, drifting out of the emptiness of my own destroyed life. There was nothing left in the man beneath me to cause an echo. No spark… no heartbeat—

            _Wait a minute._ I quelled that thought halfway through completion. _Don’t be so thick, Rose. There_ is _something that would cause an echo. At least an “echo” to your human ears…_

            I lurched upwards, yanking my hand free of the Doctor’s cold fingers and grabbing the lapels of his suit jacket with both hands. “Doctor?”

            He didn’t move, but when I pressed the flats of my hands against his chest again, I could _feel_ the strong double-heartbeat I’d thought I might have just imagined in my desolation.

            “If you’re fakin’ this jus’ to get sympathy, Doctor…” I said warningly, my eyes on his pale face, “I’ll have you know that it’s not funny.”

            Was it just me, or had his eyelids twitched just then? I peered closer.

            “Listen, Sleepin’ Beauty, if you don’t open your eyes this second I’m gonna get Jack in here to kiss you awake!”

            I was definitely sure I’d seen something flicker behind the Doctor’s eyelids this time. I leaned closer to his face, almost nose-to-nose, and waited anxiously for him to do something else. He didn’t move again, but I was sure there was hope now. There had to be.

            I couldn’t suffer any other reality to exist.

            Then an idea hit me. Something so absurd, so utterly childish that I couldn’t believe I was actually contemplating doing it. I felt the ghost of my old smile tug at my lips as I lifted my hand in the air a second time.

            “Alright, Mr. I’m a Tiny Bit Psychic,” I began, eyes locked on the Doctor’s serene expression. “I know you’re in there, so now’s the time to prove it.” I waited a beat, just in case—well, just in case, then brought my hand slashing down through the air, aiming for the Doctor’s other cheek.

            A fraction of a second before my palm would have connected—he moved. I almost didn’t see it; the Doctor’s face remained as stationary as ever, but I certainly _felt_ the way his long fingers wrapped around my wrist and yanked my hand back from his face. And the squeal of surprise that wooshed past my lips echoed the astonished relief I felt inside.

            “Doctor!” I breathed, feeling a joy like nothing I’d ever experienced flood through me like a wave of sunshine. Pulling my wrist free of the Doctor’s already slackening grip, I threw myself back across his chest, reaching out to take his face in my hands, pulling his head toward me so that I could kiss him long and hard.

            I could feel the Doctor respond to my kiss, though just barely, and the rest of his body remained motionless as ever, but when I finally released him, moving back a few inches so that I could study his face for any changes, he spoke, his voice as hoarse as mine had been upon waking.

            “Captain Harkness, you really need to get yourself under control. What will Rose think?”

            A slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up my throat at this mumbled rebuke, and when the Doctor’s eyes finally blinked open and met mine, I was smiling so hard it felt like my face might split in two.

            “Oh, shu’ up…” I admonished him, smacking his chest lightly as I blinked back tears of relief.

            The Doctor’s lips slowly curled into that cheeky grin that I had loved since the very first night we’d met. “Never going to happen, Miss Tyler,” he murmured groggily, his expression still rather glazed over. “This regeneration comes part and parcel with the gift of gab!”

            Then he coughed; just slightly, but a tiny puff of golden light exhaled from the Doctor’s mouth, and it was enough to freeze the happy expression on my face. I stared, transfixed, as the glittering breath of air swirled over the Doctor’s face for a moment then fizzled into nothingness.

            “Doctor—?” I started, unable to look away from where the trace of regeneration energy had just been. The Doctor’s hand closed around my wrist again, stronger than before.

            “Rose, look at me.”

            I dragged my eyes back to the Doctor’s, working furiously to maintain an expression of outward calm. “Tell me,” I whispered in a choked voice. “I know what I said earlier, Doctor, but _please_ , tell me if you’re gonna…” I couldn’t finish. I’d just found my way back to him again. Maybe it was selfish of me, but I didn’t want to lose this face, this man that I’d fully and completely given my heart to.

            “I don’t know,” he said after a pregnant pause, holding my gaze steadily, even as he clenched his jaw against some hidden pain. “I… I’m trying, Rose… But I don’t know if I can stop it…”

            I stared down at my hands, my mind racing as if it were trying to outpace my rapidly fluttering heart. “Doctor, you were unconscious when I woke up. I couldn’t feel you breathing or your hearts or anythin’. I thought that you were—that you were…” I swallowed hard and tried again. “If you hold onto this face, will you be ok?” I finally asked, forcing the words past trembling lips. With a supreme effort I met his eyes again. “Will you be ok, Doctor? Don’t lie to me.”

            “Maybe,” he said at last. “I honestly don’t know; I’ve never tried to hold back a regeneration before.”

            “Why now then?” I asked shakily. My chest felt tight with stress and I had to concentrate on breathing in and out. “Doctor—?”

            He smiled, though it twisted into a grimace when some inner spike of pain flared up. “Isn’t… it… obvious…?” he teased in a strained voice, and my heart skipped a beat.

            I stared down into the Doctor’s face for a long moment, trying to figure out what to say to that confession. On the floor, the Doctor squeezed his eyes shut, his lips a thin line as he fought to remain stoically silent.

            “For me…” I breathed, inexplicably touched by the gesture. I was jerked out of my reverie by a grunt, followed by a series of harsh pants from the Doctor. “Doctor!”

            The fingers around my wrist were like a vice; I didn’t know if the Doctor was even aware of how hard he was squeezing now. I barely noticed; too busy staring intently at the Doctor’s face, waiting for some magic remedy that would fix everything.

            “Doctor, _please_ , what’s going on?!”

            “It was too much; funneling all that psychic energy…” the Doctor gasped out, his face white as a sheet. “It’s burning me inside…”

A sudden, vivid flash of memory exploded across my mind’s eye:

_“_ _Rose, you've got to stop this, you've got to stop this now! You've the entire vortex running through your head, you're gonna burn!”_

“Tell me what to do!” I begged, feeling panic seize me. I reached out and clutched at the Doctor’s jacket, leaning over him with frenzied eyes. “Tell me how to make it stop!”

“There’s nothing you can do, Rose.” The Doctor’s words were like a slap in the face, and I refused to believe they could be true.

“No,” I cried, shaking my head back and forth like a petulant three year old. “No! There has to be something—!”

And then it hit me.

Why hadn’t I thought of this before? Now that I had all my memories back, one came rushing to the forefront, presenting itself like a solider ready for battle.

Of course…

“I can heal you…” I breathed out slowly, feeling like I was moving in slow-motion as the thought continued to glitter before me, dangling in the air like a Christmas ornament catching the light.

The Doctor’s grip increased as my words registered with him. “ _No_.” His voice was harsh, commanding. “It’s too dangerous!”

I ignored him.

“I can still feel it inside me, Doctor,” I whispered. “It’s faint, but it’s still there.”

I met his eyes and knew that he was torn. I could see in the Doctor’s face that he knew this was the only way, the only chance he had of healing himself without resorting to regeneration, but I could also see that he was terrified of letting me fully access the power of the Vortex again, even a tiny, diluted drop buried deep in my subconscious. But at last he gave me a curt nod.

“Tell me what to do,” I said quietly, refusing to look away from the Doctor’s eyes in case the spell was broken.

            “That spark,” he said after a long moment, and I tried not to focus on his shallow breathing as he went on. “That tiny seed of power that took root in you when the Vortex was inside your head. Close your eyes and reach deep, Rose, to the furthest recesses of your consciousness.”

            I did as instructed, taking a deep breath and sitting back on my knees as I obediently closed my eyes. The Doctor’s labored breathing seemed magnified now that I was no longer looking at him, and I curled my hands into tight fists, feeling my nails dig into my palms.

            “There’s a chance, just a hope, Rose, that if you can find that connection, the TARDIS can boost it enough to heel the burn in my mind. It won’t be easy, and I can promise that it isn’t safe…” the Doctor went on spouting warnings and consequences, going on about how he knew he shouldn’t be asking me to do this… but I was only half listening.

Because how could I not try to help him, even if the cost was both of our lives if I failed? He’d given everything for me. Now it was my turn.

I concentrated, my newly restored thoughts spinning, flashing bits of memories at me in sporadic, wild bursts, as if trying to remind me of everything I stood to lose all over again if I failed. Or possibly of everything I stood to regain.

I reached as far into my consciousness as I could go, searching for the tiny spark of light.

I could feel it.

_The Doctor looked up at me, his mouth dropping open in honest surprise as he took in my nineteenth century dress. I could feel a silly, awkward, shyness wash over me as he muttered “Blimey!”_

_“Don’t laugh…” I mumbled back, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. I loved the fancy outfit the TARDIS had provided in the wardrobe room, the floor-length skirt that swished around my ankles, the swanky black caplet around my shoulders; but the Doctor was still staring gob-smacked at me as more words tumbled unchecked from his mouth._

_“You look beautiful.”_

_There was something so honest in his simple statement that I felt my cheeks heat and a shy smile break across my face. It was the way the Doctor had said the words, without a second meaning or hidden plan underlying the compliment, the way the blokes in London so often did, dropping false flattery as easily as cigarette butts. No, I could tell that he’d really meant everything he’d said._

Something flickered inside me and I clung to it, wrapping my mind around the spark and willing it to grow. With another part of my mind I reached out toward the TARDIS, cautiously feeling my way through the dark like I was trapped in a game of hide ‘n’ seek.

_The ground beneath our feet was rocky, but I didn’t mind. The setting sun shone softly across the craggy terrain, glinting in our eyes and lighting the TARDIS behind us in soft shades. The wind blew gently, tossing my hair and the Doctor’s long coat, as he looked over at me standing next to him._

_“How long are you going to stay with me?”_

_As if he really needed to ask; as if the answer could ever have been anything but the one I promptly gave._

_“Forever.”_

_The broad smile that broke out across the Doctor’s face was mirrored on my own as he reached over and wound his fingers through mine._

It was easy, really, to locate the TARDIS as she swirled anxiously around the back of my mind. I twined my consciousness around the energy of the sentient machine and pulled tight, determined not to allow either of us to break away before I’d given everything I had.

            _We were standing in a storage room; the Doctor was holding my hands out before him, inspecting them for rope burns and questioning me as to why I appeared injury-free. I grinned back at him, informing him that Captain Jack had set me to rights, fighting back a smile when the Doctor seemed slightly irked at my casual address of the handsome stranger._

_“He’s not really a captain, Rose.”_

_I grinned saucily up at him. “D’you know what I think? I think you’re experiencing Captain Envy.”_

_He hadn’t denied it; hadn’t even tried. My heart gave a little flutter as the Doctor took the last step toward me, closing the already intimate distance between us and shifted his hands to properly take mine. Trying to regain my composure at having successfully cajoled the Doctor into proving he could dance—if indeed_ dancing _was the topic we’d actually been discussing—I licked my lips and glanced down._

_“You’ll find your feet at the end of your legs. You may care to move them.”_

_He’d only leaned even closer to me and murmured, “If he was ever a captain, he’s been defrocked.”_

_I couldn’t help the grin that rose at that, nor the cheeky comment that followed while I held the Doctor’s gaze. “Yeah? Shame I missed that…”_

_And then a new voice broke into the cocoon that had wrapped itself around the Doctor and me as we continued to pretend to actually be moving, let alone “dancing”._

_“Actually, I quit. Nobody takes my frock,” an American-accented man announced from somewhere behind us. I peeked around the Doctor’s leather-clad shoulder and found Jack grinning in a disgustedly entertained manner. “Most people notice when they’ve been teleported,” he continued, still looking highly amused. “You guys are so sweet.”_

            I concentrated on fanning the spark, on wrapping it in the combined energies of myself and the TARDIS. The next memory that came was much more recent than the last few…

            _We were sitting on the couch in this very room, the fire crackling beside us. My legs were curled under me as I leaned against the armrest of the couch, and the Doctor sat next to me, holding a piece of thick paper. He barely looked at it as he read it to me, his eyes too busy wandering over me with every word he spoke, his voice deep and musical, and his words caressing me in an almost physical way._

            The spark glowed softly, and then, all at once, expanded into an inferno of light, and I let out a cry as the Vortex bloomed within me once more. Somewhere near me I could hear the Doctor calling out my name, but his voice sounded far away… and anyway, I was too overcome with the power thrumming through my head to reply.

            _“Bring him back to me…”_ I thought, trying not to give-in to the blazing, electrical charge pulsing through my mind. I was just barely holding myself together now.

In the back of my mind the TARDIS hummed, and I could feel her working hard, weaving tendrils of her own mental connections with both me and the Doctor over and around the wavering Vortex, sending a healing vibe through me and down to the trembling man in front of me.

_“Please…”_ I begged the Universe, the Powers That Be, anyone out there who might control Fate and have the power to intervene. _“Please… I love him. Bring him back to me!”_

The light in my head flared hotly, searing across my consciousness with a scorching intensity, and my eyes flew open, glowing gold once more.

“You are mine, my Doctor,” I heard myself say in a voice that was both mine and not my own. “And you will not suffer any longer…”

I reached out and placed my hands gently on either side of the Doctor’s head, looking down at him and the faint swirls of golden light that had gathered while I’d been concentrating. I increased the pressure of my hands just slightly and closed my eyes once more.

“Stay…”

The word wasn’t a magic spell. Nor was it a command. It had nothing at all to do with the Vortex humming through my very being as I bent over the man I’d given up everything for.

No. It was a plea.

“I love you…” I whispered the words, feeling my tenuous control over the threads of the TARDIS’ consciousness, the Vortex, and the connection to the Doctor shudder violently, and then snap… and I collapsed across the Doctor’s chest without a sound.

**~OOO~**

“Rose…”

            A hand was stroking my hair, gently brushing across my head in a gesture that was both intimate and tender.

            “Time to wake up now, Rose…”

            The Voice was calm, relaxed, and oh so familiar. I tried to find my way out of the darkness so that I could see the owner of that Voice. Slowly I became aware of warmth, of being cradled in someone’s arms, tucked against someone’s body.

            “Hmmm….?” I murmured faintly, feeling like I was drifting, trapped below the surface of dark water. The Voice moved closer, right in my ear now.

            “Come on, Rose, open your eyes… Don’t make me take a page out of your book now, because, let me tell you, your bedside manner leaves something to be desired.”

            I felt the strangest urge to laugh, though I wasn’t exactly sure why.

            The surface of the water seemed closer now. I was almost sure I could see light fracturing through the darkness.

            “Don’t think that keeping your eyes closed long enough is going to convince me to let Jack in here, Miss Tyler,” the Voice said warningly. “As far as he, or any other man, is concerned, you’re otherwise engaged… forever.”

            I blinked.

            The arms around me tightened when I moved, and I could feel the lap I was splayed across shift.

            “That’s it… easy now…”

            “Doctor?” I sighed, fighting to pull myself back into the waking world. I felt lightheaded, and exhausted, but somehow, inexplicably… happy.

            “I’m here,” the Voice said, and I blinked hard, slowly stretching my limbs as feeling ebbed back into them.

            “Did it… work?” I mumbled, trying to sit up. The Doctor shifted again, helping me manipulate my body into the proper position, then leaning me back against the bottom of the couch. I rubbed at my eyes, trying to focus on the man across from me.

            He looked the same as always. Wide brown eyes, quirky eyebrows, brilliant grin. His hair looked ruffled and his face was still pale, but colour was slowly coming back into his cheeks.

“Oh, you were brilliant, Rose Tyler, absolutely brilliant.”

I felt the edge of a hesitant smile tug at my lips at this statement. “You mean…?”

“Oh yes!” The Doctor grinned, winking roguishly. “You’re stuck with this face for a good long while yet.”

I launched myself at him, flinging my arms around the Doctor’s neck with a strength I hadn’t realized had returned. I felt his long arms wrap tightly around me, holding me against his chest with a deep fierceness that he rarely allowed me to see, and I pressed myself harder to him.

“I thought I was gonna lose you again,” I mumbled into the Doctor’s shoulder, trying not to cry. I was sick of crying. Sick of feeling lost and confused and so alone. The Doctor’s hands rubbed gently up and down my back, soothing my anxiousness.

“Never going to happen,” the Doctor murmured into my hair, and I clung to him a moment longer, reveling in his warmth and solidness; in his “him-ness”. My Doctor.

Finally I pulled back and looked him straight in the eye. “You’re really ok? You’re not jus’ pretending so that I won’t freak out?”

The Doctor gave me a cheeky grin, and opened his eyes very wide. “I’m perfectly fine. See? No naughty regeneration energy is there?”

His teasing throwback to the flippant remark I’d made in the console room pulled a genuine smile out of me. That conversation felt like a lifetime ago. I could hardly believe how much had happened since then.

“You’re still you…” I said at last, affection welling up inside me so that I felt like I might burst from joy. The Doctor’s hands stilled on my back, and his face grew serious.

“And you’re still you?”

I shifted on the Doctor’s lap, my hands settling on his shoulders as I stared into his eyes. “I remember it all…” I told him. “Everything. From the night we met, to how you took care of me, to coming into this room today…”

The Doctor said nothing to this, just looked at me with an expression of such tenderness that I had to look away.

“You never gave up on me,” I went on softly, fingers playing with the collar of the Doctor’s jacket. “Even when I thought the worst of you.”

“How could I?” he replied just as quietly. “You were so lost…”

Just then I noticed something out of the corner of my eye: a folded piece of paper lying forgotten on the abandoned sofa. My heart gave a thump of recognition as the Doctor followed my gaze.

“You wrote me a love letter,” I murmured, feeling a smile stretch across my face. My tongue poked through my teeth as I shot the Doctor a coy look.

He turned back to me slowly, an abrupt intensity in his eyes that caused my heart to skip a beat and my grin to falter. “I did.”

“It was beautiful,” I whispered back, and the Doctor smiled faintly.

“You couldn’t understand it.”

“Yes, I could,” I insisted with a little frown. “Not everything has to be in straight lines, Doctor. I could _feel_ what you were saying, even if the words you used were different.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you how I felt, Rose,” he said quietly, one hand coming up to cup my cheek. I leaned into it. “I’m sorry for everything I put you through. It wasn’t fair of me.”

“Doctor—” But he wasn’t finished yet.

“I should have told you so very long ago; and every day after that… I’m in love with you, Rose Tyler. And I have been for a very long time.”

My mouth dropped open. I honestly hadn’t expected him to actually say it. I could feel that the Doctor loved me, in the way he held me and spoke to me, and even in the letter he’d written for me; the song of his heart. But somehow I’d given up on him ever voicing the words aloud. And I’d been ok with that.

Except, now that he had, I realized how very not ok I’d actually been. Hearing those seven words from him to me had released a tension I hadn’t realized I’d still been holding onto. I suddenly felt lighter than air.

And yet I couldn’t formulate words. I just stared at him.

The Doctor’s burning gaze seemed to falter the longer I went without saying anything. After several long seconds he slowly dropped his hand from my face. “Rose…?” he began uncertainly, and finally my brain restarted.

“Took you long enough…” I finally muttered, and hid a smile at the adorably confused expression on the Doctor’s face. Whatever he’d expected me to say, clearly this hadn’t been it.

“What—?” he started again, but I was through talking.

Before the Doctor could get another word out I was kissing him. In fact, I’d sort of been a little over assertive in my sudden change of tactics—and kind of knocked the Doctor onto his back. Not that he really seemed to mind. Or notice.

I wound my hands into the Doctor’s hair, enjoying the silky feel of the thick tufts between my fingers as the Doctor’s arms came up to wrap tightly around my back. My own hair dropped down in a curtain around our faces, blocking out the firelight, and I let out a little moan of satisfaction as I shifted on top of him.

This was how things were meant to be. The two of us, together, lost in a world of our own making; needing no one but each other and the vastness of the stars spread out before us.

I was vaguely aware of the fact that I was lying _right on top_ of the Doctor’s lean frame, and that I’d hooked a leg around one of his as I pressed closer against his flat stomach. Not that all parts of the man beneath me were… er… _flat_ though. This fact became especially clear when the Doctor let out a little growl and rolled the pair of us over—and nearly into the bottom of the couch—shifting so that _he_ was now the one pressed across me. When he rolled his hips aggressively against mine I let out a little squeak against his mouth, and felt him respond with an even more heated kiss than before.

I jerked slightly in surprise, a little startled when I suddenly felt the Doctor’s hand slid down my thigh to pull my leg, still twined around his, higher up his body so that he could move against me more easily. My arms were wrapped around the Doctor’s neck as he finally dragged his mouth from mine to work his way down my throat, murmuring words in a language I couldn’t understand every time he moved to a new part of my skin.

He was still rocking his hips rhythmically against me, sending shockwaves of pleasure through me as I clung to his shoulders, my gold hair fanned across the floor around us and my eyes halfway rolled back in my head.

“Doctor…” I moaned, almost embarrassed at the need in my own voice. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to care though. My stomach fluttered wildly, hot-cold sensations spreading through my chest as my hands moved down to the collar of his suit jacket, starting to tug at the fabric, trying to pull it away from the Doctor’s body.

All at once a second set of hands were in action, reaching up and resolutely pulling my fingers free of the unmoving material. The Doctor gently pinned my wrists to the ground next to my head, breathing hard as he gazed down at me, heat blazing in his eyes.

“Not here,” he said, voice rough with desire, then leaned down to kiss me again, much more sweetly than he had before.

I felt the Doctor’s weight shift off me as he rolled onto his knees, and I pushed up onto my elbows in confusion, trying to catch my breath. But before I could ask him what he’d meant by that, strong arms were sliding under my knees and around my back, and the Doctor was swinging me into the air and up against his chest as he pushed to his feet. He moved swiftly across the small sitting room and out into the hall, not once taking his eyes off mine. His long legs carrying us quickly down the corridor where we soon reached a familiar door. It swung open at our arrival and I saw the Doctor’s bedroom spread out before us.

My heart began to sprint in my chest and I turned my face into the Doctor’s shoulder as he hovered in the doorway. We were here. _Really here_. And there was no doubt what was going to happen once we crossed the room to the bed tucked into the side alcove in the back.

Slowly the Doctor moved into the room, navigating the darkness with ease. When we were far enough in that I began to be afraid we might accidentally crash into a wall, or trip over a table, the Doctor stopped. He shifted me in his arms so that he could carefully set me on my feet, and then reached past me to click on a lamp. The warm light glowed softly on the side table, lighting the Doctor’s lean frame in a golden hue, and when I glanced through my lashes at the Doctor’s face I was suddenly overcome with nerves.

 Ducking my head, I played with the edge of my cardigan, feeling awkward and unsure. I may have taken the lead in the sitting room, but this was another matter altogether. I let out a squeak when I felt the Doctor’s hands gently settle on my upper arms, but he did nothing more than draw me closer to his body.

“Rose, are you… alright?”

He sounded so concerned, so hesitant, that I had to look up at him. He was studying me with a strange expression on his face. He looked almost… apprehensive?

“I’m…” _I’m fine_ , was on the tip of my tongue, but that wasn’t true. I was nervous, and anxious, and a little scared. But I was also content, and happy, and excited. I felt a sudden, warm, pressure on my forehead and realized the Doctor had just kissed me.

“Me too,” he murmured in my ear, then his hands came up and slowly pushed my cardigan off my shoulders, tugging it gently until it slid down my arms and dropped soundlessly to the floor. The sudden draft in the room raised goose bumps on my arms and I leaned closer into the warmth of the Doctor’s chest. He trailed his fingertips softly down my arms, leaving an electric charge in their wake, then gripped my elbows lightly and dipped his head to kiss my neck where it met my shoulders.

I couldn’t help the shiver that the sensation of his lips on my skin caused, or the half-stifled gasp that slipped past my lips. The Doctor tightened his hold on me and started kissing his way back up my jaw. For a long moment I just stood stiffly, my hands resting lightly against the Doctor’s chest as his lips tickled my throat, then I finally managed to actually take a deep breath and do something productive. Hesitantly, I lifted my hands higher, and carefully undid the buttons of the Doctor’s jacket. It fell open, revealing the pale blue dress shirt he wore underneath, his patterned tie lying flat against his chest. My heart racing, I reached up and tugged it off his shoulders, not getting very far since the Doctor’s hands were still firmly attached to my arms. Deciding to leave that problem for later, I raised slightly trembling fingers to the tie about his neck, and tried to work it free. This proved to be a two-fold problem: 1) the knot was so intricately woven that I couldn’t figure out where to start undoing it; and 2) my fingers were shaking so badly from nerves that I couldn’t get a good grip on the silky cloth anyway. The longer I worked at the unhelpful article of clothing, the deeper the blush on my cheeks became, until at last the Doctor pulled back from me, catching at my wrists and prying my hands free of his neck before I succeed in strangling him.

“I—I’m sorry!” I mumbled quickly, yanking my hands free and just barely stopping myself from hiding them behind my back. My face was on fire. God, I was so bad at this! How humiliating…

“Rose,” he said in a low voice, and I ducked my head, refusing to look at him until he took my chin in one hand and gently raised my head. “It’s ok.” Then he leaned down and kissed me, long and slow and deep, enough to leave me breathless and little dizzy by the time he finally pulled back. While I was preoccupied with not melting into a puddle on the floor, he shed his jacket and worked the knot free on his tie with long, nimble fingers, discarding the length of fabric carelessly to one side. Then he tugged me back against his chest, pulling me against his hips with one arm wrapped tightly around my waist, and pinning my hands against his chest once more. “Now where were we?”

The heat in the Doctor’s eyes was enough to make my knees buckle, and I leaned against his chest more heavily. He didn’t seem to mind, only ducked his head down and kissed me hard. God, this man could kiss. His mouth was insistent and demanding on mine, his tongue coaxing my lips to part for him, and soon any embarrassment I’d been feeling was a vague and distant memory.

In short order I was aware of the Doctor’s slightly rough fingertips sliding over the smooth, bare skin of my back, moving ever higher under my tank top. Without quite realizing what I was doing, I found myself pulling away from the Doctor’s kiss, stepping back from his embrace, and then, before I could talk myself out of it, crossing my arms over my chest and pulling my shirt over my head. The Doctor’s eyes widened briefly at my bold move, and for a moment he seemed a little off kilter, unsure where to put his hands or settle his gaze.

Licking my lips, I shook my hair out of my face and stepped closer to him, my own eyes firmly on the row of buttons down the front of his chest. I could hear the way the Doctor’s breathing picked up just slightly as I drew near again, but he held himself perfectly still as I concentrated on my task. When the fabric parted at last, revealing just a hint of the leanly muscled chest beneath, I couldn’t quite bring myself to meet the Doctor’s eyes. Instead, I slid my hands beneath the open halves of his shirt, tracing my fingertips lightly across his skin. I did not miss the shudder that ran through the Doctor at my touch, nor the way his abdominal muscles contracted when my exploring hands drifted low. Beneath my fingers I could feel the staccato double-beat of the Doctor’s hearts, and wondered if he was as nervous right now as I was.

When I finally lifted my head, I found the Doctor watching me, his arms firmly at his sides but the desire in his eyes nearly palpable. I withdrew my hands, abruptly embarrassed at the brazen way I’d just been running them over the Doctor’s skin, but couldn’t help the way my eyes followed the shifting of his muscles as the he shrugged out of his shirt, letting it join the rest of the crumpled clothing scattered about our feet. Now that the Doctor was… well… _naked_ from the waist up, my hands fluttered about like twin birds, unable to decide where to land.

“Doctor…?” I wasn’t sure what I was asking in that moment, but he seemed to understand.

 “Come here,” the Doctor murmured at last, closing the distance between us and settling his hands on my waist, holding me lightly against him.

I swallowed hard at the sensation of the Doctor’s cool skin pressing against my own flushed body, and felt my breathing speed up. Everything was so much slower this time, more careful and tender and loving. I could feel the desire in the Doctor; it seemed magnified somehow by his carefully controlled actions, his determination not to rush me. This was nothing like the various situations we’d found ourselves in over the past few weeks, always giving-in to passion and grabbing at each other, pushing up against walls and tearing at clothing. No… This was… _right_.

This was love.

I pushed up on my toes, pressing my body against the Doctor’s chest, and enjoying the way his fingers clenched around my hips in surprise.

“Kiss me, Doctor…” I breathed, sliding my hands around his neck and pulling his head down toward mine. “Kiss me so I won’t ever forget again…”

**~OOO~**

            ***hides* Oh don’t hate me! I promise the next chapter will start off with a bang! :3 This one was just getting so long that I felt like I needed it to break off or it would run forever! Don’t worry, this scene is very far from finished… ;)**

***peers in your window* I just wanted to thank you *personally*for your review. Yes, YOU. You’re a star!  *climbs inside and hugs you, then skips off into the night***


	20. Chapter 20

**I’m so, so sorry for the mean cliffhanger I forced on you all last chapter! XD But here’s where you can all shout “Finally!” at me in your reviews, ok? Btw, lots of you seemed concerned over the Doctor’s well-being. Who thought, just for a moment, that the Doctor might *really* be dead? Or regenerate? Judging from your reviews, there were a few of you who thought that I might really be that mean… *wink* Oh, and I suppose this is the part where I remind you that this story was rated “M” for a reason. :3**

**~OOO~**

-Chapter 20-

            And kiss me he did. He had one hand fisted in my hair and the other wrapped firmly around my waist, pressing me hard against his chest until our heartbeats mixed together. I could feel his rigid self-control waning in this kiss, and knew that it would be a struggle for him to continue to be slow and gentle. I found my hands sliding down from the back of the Doctor’s head to cling to his shoulders, still a little unnerved about touching his bare skin, reservations which the Doctor apparently didn’t have at all. I could feel the hidden strength in his hands as they slid over my back, pulled my hips harder against his own, teased the clasp at the back of my bra… and felt as if I might explode from the heat building inside me.

            When he finally pulled back I slumped a little in the Doctor’s arms, putting up no resistance at all when he began to guide me backwards toward the bed. The backs of my knees hit the side of the frame and I murmured against his mouth when the Doctor nudged me backward until I had to sit down. He stepped closer immediately, his long legs on either side of mine, his lips barely leaving my mouth, and carefully pressed me down until my back was flat against the mattress. Then his hands dropped from my back to my waist, and my hazy eyes flew open as I became aware of the fact that the Doctor was undoing my jeans.

He worked slowly, methodically opening the button at the top and sliding down the zipper, before lifting his nearly black eyes back to mine for permission.  I could barely breathe at the sensation of the Doctor’s hands resting patiently over my hipbones, his fingertips tickling my skin, but I managed to lift my hips in the air enough to allow him to slide my jeans down and then pull them off my legs. When he’d tossed them aside and turned back to where I lay, my bare feet dangling in the air several inches off the ground, he just stared down at me for a long moment, his hands absently sliding up and down the tops of my thighs.

Then he said something in Gallifreyan; it came out in a low, reverent voice, and he bent closer, helping me slide further up onto the bed, and following me down. The Doctor had straddled my hips, his knees on either side of me, and his body weight supported by his lower arms, when I finally found my voice again.

“What did you say?” I whispered past my fluttering heart, my eyes roving over the contours of his lean body, but my arms remaining weighted to the bed as the Doctor hovered over me. He smiled slightly, one hand coming up to sift my blond hair through his fingers before his absently traced his fingertips, feather-light, across my temple.

“I said,” he replied, his gaze penetrating my own, “You are mine now...the song of my heart made physical and whole.”

I couldn’t have said anything in response to that even if I _had_ been able to formulate words at the heated look in the Doctor’s eyes, because he’d slid a hand up my neck and dipped his head down to mine, pinning me to the bed with a kiss so full of passion that I felt as if the entire world had ceased to exist outside of the sensation of the Doctor’s lips on mine.

When my lips were finally my own again (with the Doctor busy working his way excruciatingly slowly down my shoulder, moving my bra strap out of his way so he could work unencumbered, and _still_ holding his body agonizingly away from mine), I managed to gasp out, “It’s not enough.”

The Doctor froze, his hands faltering just the faintest bit in their grip on my shoulder and alternate hip, and he slowly drew back from my collarbone to meet my hazy eyes. I could see the question in them, and then stark and sudden hurt. It was then that I realized, in my lust-addled haze I’d forgotten to finish the sentence. I took a moment to try and get my breathing back under control, then finally dragged one of my arms up off the bed to place my palm gently against the Doctor’s cheek.

“I meant, Doctor,” I added softly, “That _this_ … that is, a _physical_ connection… it’s not enough… for you…”

He still looked confused, and his lips parted as a determined expression crossed his face. I could practically hear the assurances of how much he _was_ enjoying the _physical connection_ , but before the Doctor could actually speak, I moved my hand higher, grazing my fingertips across his temple and watched as the Doctor’s eyes widened in surprise when he realized what I meant.

“Rose…?” he asked quietly, his eyebrows drawing together, and I hurried on.

 “You told me once that your people, they needed a mental connection to truly… um… _be together_ …” I said at last, and finally the Doctor’s expression cleared, his hand coming up to gently draw mine back and return it to the mattress next to my head.

 “Doctor, is there any way it would work between… between a… I mean, between you an’ me?”

“I don’t know…” he answered slowly, expression turning considering, though the heat in his eyes remained the same. “It’s never been done before.” He studied me lying beneath him for a long moment, and seemed conflicted by the resolute expression on my face. “I could connect to _your_ mind, Rose,” he said at last. “That part is easy. Humans have very little resistance to psychic impulses; that isn’t the problem though.”

“Then what is?” I pressed, refusing to look away from his burning gaze. I felt much more relaxed with the Doctor’s brow furrowed in concentration, as he thought through some complicated issue, than when I was distracted by the thought of how very little clothing separated our bodies.

The Doctor frowned down at me, starting to pull back, and I caught at his wrists with both hands, holding him in place. Some of the need had gone out of his eyes now, he looked troubled. I didn’t want to upset him by further forcing the issue, but I couldn’t help trying. Because I could see, in just the last few moments, and in his carefully controlled reaction to my implied offer, how much he wanted this. He hadn’t even been able to help touching my own temple a few minutes ago, though I didn’t think he’d even been aware of the action, it had been too automatic for him to pay attention to.

“I don’t know if you’d be able to handle _my_ mind,” he said finally. He didn’t state this with any arrogance, just simple factuality, and the fact that we both knew this was true made it that much harder for him to let me risk it. We both knew that my mind had been through far too much in the past weeks, let alone the past few days, but I didn’t care. I felt fine _now_. And I wanted to give the Doctor this gift if I could.

“Would forging a Connection make things… um… different for you?” I asked hesitantly, and saw the Doctor’s expression flicker as he worked to formulate a proper response.

Slowly he lifted a hand to stroke his thumb down my cheek, the look in his dark eyes becoming instantly ten times more intense. “Yes,” he said simply, his voice husky, and I blushed harder, feeling my heart trip into overdrive.

“H-how?” I asked, somehow getting the word out around the rapid pulse fluttering in my throat. The Doctor continued to thoughtfully caress my cheek, his eyes unblinking and locked onto my own. He shifted then, so he was laying on his side next to me, though he kept his body pressed right up against mine.

 “Those races with telepathic connections can feel and experience emotions and physical sensations at a heightened level,” the Doctor explained, his fingertips sliding feather-soft down my thigh and sending a shiver through me. “When two minds are as one, the ability to give and receive pleasure is intensified. Basically, if you _think_ something, it’s almost guaranteed to occur, as your partner is likely to react as if they’d had the thought themselves.”

_Oh god. The possibilities of that comment…_

I swallowed hard, the sound probably audible to the Doctor’s keen ears as I could have sworn he bit back a smirk before becoming serious again.

“But Rose, you don’t need feel bad about that. I’ve never held your humanity against you, just the opposite in fact. And really, it’s alright. I’ve always known that certain… _things_ … wouldn’t be possible in our… er… physical relationship.”

“Are you so sure that it wouldn’t work between us, Doctor?” I asked again, eyeing the speculative look on the Doctor’s face. He was, apparently, very certain he was in the right. I raised my hand and grazed my fingertips along his temple, just as he’d done to me earlier, and this time the stutter in the Doctor’s breathing was obvious. I felt a little smirk play about my own lips.

When I repeated the motion, more firmly, sending a shudder through the Doctor’s upper body, he twisted so that he was once more leaning over me, trapping my wrist in his large hand and pulling my fingers away from his head with a low growl of impatience. “Stop that!”

“Stop what?” I quarried innocently, shifting beneath him on the blanket so that his eyes flickered over me distractedly. “I thought psychic connections between humans and Time Lords weren’t possible. Something about their minds being _too superior_ or some tosh like that—eep!” The Doctor had tightened his knees against my hips, effectively locking my body into place. He glared down at me, but somehow his annoyed look only amused me further.

“Low-level psychic connection,” he muttered darkly, “stimulated by lowered inhibitions.”

I raised an eyebrow at that deflection. “Know what I think, Doctor?” I teased him in a somewhat breathless, yet nonetheless flirtatious, voice, my tongue poking through my teeth again. “I think you’re afraid of what you might let yourself feel…” I broke off then, because the Doctor’s face was suddenly very close to mine. His expression looked like it was trying to be annoyed but was losing out to _want_.

“And _I_ think, Rose Tyler,” he said very slowly, lowering his body down so that certain parts _just_ brushed against me, “that you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into; this could be very dangerous. What I _want_ aside, letting you into my head on the _best_ of days would be iffy, and your mind has been so abused…”

“I trust you…” I whispered. This only seemed to make him more upset.

            “That’s not the point, Rose. You barely know a fraction of the things I’ve seen and done in my lifetime. The darkness inside me could swallow you whole.” Before I could respond to that ridiculous statement, no matter how much he believed it to be true, the Doctor spoke again. “This is enough, I promise.” And he lowered his body onto mine and kissed me deeply, drawing me tightly against him.

“Don’t try and distract me,” I gasped, when the Doctor finally relinquished my lips from his angry kiss. He frowned down at me. “Doctor, I can tell that you won’t feel fully satisfied without a mental connection too, you won’t be able help it.” When his frown deepened at my obstinacy, I smiled softly. “You were already touching my temples earlier…” The self-conscious surprise that showed on the Doctor’s face at my gentle reminder was enough to assert that I’d been correct in his not being aware of his actions before.

“Rose…”

“Just let me try, Doctor. You’ve done so much for me, shown me so much… Let me do this for you.”

There was a long moment where we stared each other down, the Doctor looking troubled and me looking stubbornly back at him. At last he relented, and moved off me so I could push up into a sitting position.

 “You really want to try this?” he clarified, once we were both arranged sitting on our knees, our chests rising and falling a little too rapidly for our façade of outward calmness to be believable.

I nodded, feeling nerves start to wake up again as I reached out for his hands. “I want this to be… to be as special for you as it is for me.” I ducked my head, blushing at this proclamation, sure that my words sounded naive and inexperienced; never mind that was exactly what I was.

“Rose…” And the Doctor’s voice was abruptly so tender that I couldn’t help glancing up at him through my lashes. He was smiling softly, and had scooted closer to me on the massive bed while I’d been lost in my own bashfulness. His hands closed around mine and squeezed gently. “I want you to know that even if this doesn’t work, I’m honored that you were willing to try. Because I _want_ to be connected you, in _every_ way; but please don’t think any less of yourself if it doesn’t take.”

“Just tell me what to do, Doctor,” I whispered, refusing to be talked out of this, and moved closer so that my knees were pressed up against his.

For a long moment the Doctor just looked into my eyes, studying my face as if trying to see if I was really up this, then, at last, he withdrew his hands from mine. When I opened my mouth to protest, he hurried to reassure me.

“Hand-clasping only works with full-blooded Gallifreyans,” he explained. “Their minds are strong enough that a Connection can be asserted through loose touch. But with the difference in psychic levels between a human and a Time Lord, a more assertive connection will have to be undertaken.” When my brow furrowed at this explanation, the Doctor’s gentle smile grew. “We’ll have to connect more directly to each other,” he clarified, lifting his arms and framing my face with both long-fingered hands. He carefully moved two fingers on either side of my head and pressed them gently, yet firmly, against my temples, then met my gaze.

With shaking fingers I raised my hands to mirror his position, my hands feeling small against the Doctor’s head in comparison with the way his palms nearly covered both sides of my face.

“Close your eyes,” the Doctor instructed, and I did so, feeling suddenly more vulnerable than I had when he’d been taking my clothes off earlier. “Relax and open yourself to the idea of letting me in.” I must have tensed subconsciously at these words, because the Doctor’s voice became even gentler than before. “This isn’t like the last time you let me in, Rose, this is a surrendering of your mind to an equal. You have to completely let go of any inhibitions and let yourself become completely free.” His voice sounded closer than before, and I felt him shift nearer so that his voice was right in my ear. His next words sent a shiver though me: “When two Gallifreyans perform the Connection ceremony it’s because they have matching desires to become united as one in all facets of their lives. For the Connection to take, both parties must be beyond willing; they have to _need_ each other. Rose, you have to _want_ my mind connected to yours, more than anything else…”

The Doctor’s hands remained steady against my temples, unmoving even as the first warm brush of his consciousness fluttered against the back of my mind. In contrast, I knew that my own hands trembled against his head, and my breathing seemed to be picking up speed even as the Doctor’s eased into a familiar, slow rhythm of ins and outs.

“I want you…” I heard myself murmur, and felt the Doctor’s hands tighten a fraction against my head, as if he suddenly had to work to remain still.

Staying silent, he brushed against me again; the mental caress as gentle and coaxing and kind as the man across from me. My breathing slowed… I started to fully relax…

And that’s when I heard him.

**_I need you… Rose Tyler…_ **

I only flinched the tiniest bit before getting myself back under control. I should have expected this; because really, what else was it going to mean when two telepaths connected minds? _Of course_ he was speaking inside my head now.

**_I can’t begin to pretend I deserve you, but I’ve wanted you since that first day. Since the first time you refused to run away from my world. You are so very brave, and intelligent, and beautiful… my Rose…_ **

I wondered if he expected me to be able to hear him? I wondered if I could speak back to him?

**_And I love you, Rose, more than anyone has any right to love another creature. But that doesn’t make it untrue. And now that I have you, I won’t ever let you go…_ **

I concentrated on reaching out to the warm sensation that was spreading through my head, blanketing every thought and memory with a protective touch, and pushed forward, searching for the spark that was the Doctor himself. I had never felt so utterly cherished in my entire life.

_Doctor?_ I thought hesitantly, feeling a little ridiculous and sure that this couldn’t possibly work both ways; especially not with me being a human. Since the Doctor’s head was only inches from mine, our foreheads nearly touching, I heard his breath catch at my unvoiced question.

**_Rose?!_ **

He sounded startled, and I knew I had guessed right: he had—and I sighed inwardly, stupidly arrogant man—been sure that the Connection wouldn’t work. However, just as I was about to confirm that it wasn’t his imagination, my senses were assaulted with a barrage of stinging zaps of light, like being caught in the middle of an electrical storm. I let out a verbal cry of distress and felt the Doctor’s hands clamp onto my head to hold me still.

_Doctor!_ I shouted silently, feeling like I was being struck on all sides by probing, incessantly curious, sparks. They didn’t hurt, exactly, but the sensory overload wasn’t pleasant. It took everything in me to lock my body into place.

**_I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I tried to tell you it could be like this…_** the Doctor thought back immediately, and I fought not to pull away.

He was right. He had warned me that I might not be able to handle taking on a full Time Lord consciousness, with everything he’d ever seen and done.

**_Don’t break the Connection, Rose…for it to properly take you can’t fight it; you have to let it play out…_ **

I tried to do as instructed, but barely five seconds had passed before my consciousness was thrust unceremoniously into one of the Doctor’s memories.

_I spun around, eyes wide at the site before me. There was fire and yelling everywhere, on all sides me. The sound of running feet pounded past me but I saw no owner to claim the sound of hasty retreat. Explosions peppered the air, echoing the desperate shouts of men and women, mixed with the increasingly distressed electronic screams of “Ex-ter-min-ate!” ”Ex-ter-min-ate!” until it felt like “quiet” was a concept that had never existed in life or the universe. There was only this: the sounds of hatred and fear, and the last cries of the dying._

_Then a shadow fell across the field of red grass where war stretched on endlessly. I couldn’t see the face of the person standing there; it was backlit by a violent yellow and orange fireball, cast by several Dalek ships exploding into particles which were scattered across the golden sky, but I knew instantly who it was. I could feel the fear and disgust and absolute loathing churning within him as he surveyed the scene before him, and I knew that the actions of a desperate and terrified man were far more dangerous than any garden-variety psychopath with a butcher knife and a vendetta._

_This was the Time War; and the Doctor was about to destroy everything he’d ever loved in an attempt to save the rest of the Universe._

I jerked away from the horror of the memory with such force that I almost thought I would fall off the bed. In reality my body hadn’t moved at all; everything I was now experiencing was locked inside my head. Or the Doctor’s head, as the case might be.

I could feel the Doctor’s presence hovering in the back of my own mind, tense and anxious, but not trying to hold anything back, exposing to me the darkest part of his nature and leaving himself vulnerable before my judgment. And that was when I fully understood what he’d meant all that time ago, when he’d tried to explain how intimate and sacred a Connection ceremony was between the two potential Gallifreyan partners involved in it. Once you’d seen into each other minds, there was no going back from it.

So much rage and pain and sorrow… The feelings assaulted me one after another as my consciousness was released from the Time War and shoved into a new memory.

_I was standing in the TARDIS, the Doctor fiddling with the console nearby. He didn’t notice me, of course, but I knew this Doctor, the man with the short hair and leather coat, and the broken heart hidden behind a mad, painted grin and sad eyes. He tried so hard to gain absolution for what he considered the most grievous of crimes, even as he acted like he didn’t deserve the forgiveness he so desperately sought. The sorrow in this memory nearly drove me to my knees with the pain of it all._

And so it went. Memory after memory, time after time, the Doctor fighting to both save and destroy different races across the vast expansion of Time and Space. Until, after an eternity of swirling emotions: anger, rage, sorrow, desolation… there came a new feeling.

_I saw the Doctor’s first meeting with me; and I could feel the way his feelings toward this stupid ape, this random human female who had refused to be put off despite the danger, began to change over time._

_First there came hope; yes, a faint yet guarded possibility that someone might actually be able to see him as The Doctor again, not the man who had destroyed millions at his own behest._

_Then came a cautious, hesitant caring. This feeling of irrational desire to protect one being above all others was strange to the Doctor. He’d had many companions over his extensive lifetime, and spent twice as much time travelling alone, but somehow, this time, it was different. This time the desire to protect that absurd human girl was more elevated than any of the others he’d travelled with._

_She was… special._

_And even more inexplicable, she seemed to care about him too. Which was insane. All of his companions—well, most of them—throughout his life had developed a sort of hero-worship toward him. He was sure that many of the females, and possibly some of the males, had even developed feelings for him… but he’d always ignored them. Because they were human and he was Time Lord, and a relationship between a blazing sun and a spark that flares and fades in the space of an instant could never, ever work._

_But she was different; that ridiculous shop girl from London. She’d taken his hand and never let go._

_Not until he’d forced her to._

_And even then she’d come back to him, as wretched and undeserving as he was. He’d hurt her so badly. He should have made her go home… But he was selfish, and he wanted her to want him as much as he desired her…_

It was overwhelming to experience the Doctor’s hatred of himself, to relive his anger and self-deprecating view of his battles and victories… but the faint flicker of joy that I’d felt when the memories of the Doctor allowing himself to admit that he cared for me floated past, even as he fought against it tooth and claw, eased the pain battering at me from all sides like a ship tossed on the waves of a storm. And I knew then, I knew that I had to make him see that he wasn’t a lost a cause. That no one is beyond redemption…

_Doctor…_ I thought gently, brushing my consciousness over the roiling, blackness that had consumed his mind. I could feel him respond to my call, but he didn’t say anything. _It’s our actions that define us, and yours are no different._

**_You agree then,_** he replied at last. **_That the man you claim to love is a monster._**

I felt around his consciousness, quiet now that the rage of emotions and memories had played out, until I located the warm sensation that I equated with the Doctor himself. _I agree that you_ believe _you are a monster, beyond proper love and acceptance by another._ I thought back, a frown in my mental voice. _But nothing you could have shown me would ever make me turn away from you, Doctor. I said that your actions define you, and even when you feel that you gave in to the darkest side of your nature, the place where no one can ever return from, I could see a light. I saw everything, Doctor, all of you that ever was, and still I felt kindness._

He was pacing, if a consciousness could be said to pace, at any rate the sensation of ‘Doctor’ was fluttering agitatedly inside his head, just like his physical form so often bounced about the console platform when he was avoiding confrontation or trying to think something though.

**_How can you still want to be with me after everything you’ve seen me do?_** he thought back, sounding both angry and dismayed. **_After all the creatures I destroyed? All the blood on my hands? You’ve seen the real me, Rose, and your reaction should be to run away._** His voice rose to a mental shout, and it was all I could do to hold still. **_Run, Rose Tyler, as far and as fast as you can!_**

The Doctor’s mind shoved angrily at mine, as if trying to force me out of his head, but I planted myself firmly and shoved back, hard enough that I think he may have been, for one tiny instant, surprised at the ferocity in my response. It wasn’t easy, because a Time Lord’s mind is his power, and the Doctor was far stronger than me in both physical and mental capacities, but he soon relented against my strong will and allowed me steady him, gradually becoming still again.

_I won’t run!_ I thought back fiercely, and felt him stiffen mentally. Quickly, I pressed on, bypassing the coming argument that sure to follow if I gave the Doctor a chance speak. _I_ _won’t,_ I repeated. _For so many reasons that you refuse to believe about yourself._ _I won’t run_ _because you_ are _kind, my Doctor,_ I insisted, trying to wrap the feeling of love and protection that he’d washed over me so many times around the bitterness hovering before me. _Because you never stopped trying to protect me. Because you save my world over and over again, even when we don’t deserve it. Because you always give everyone a chance to change. Because you can love, Doctor, and I can feel it everywhere, always._

**_Rose…_ **

_Because I love you, Doctor. And I will never let you go._

**~OOO~**

I was gradually aware of being back in my own body, my mind free of the Doctor’s presence and his devoid of mine, yet I kept my eyes closed as my hands slipped slowly off the Doctor’s temples and fell onto my lap. I could hear him breathing quietly next to me, and wondered if he was watching me, waiting for my physical reaction to the tumultuous mental strain we’d both been through.

            “Are you alright?” came the Doctor’s quiet question after nearly a minute of silence, and I slowly blinked my eyes open and lifted my head to meet his. He looked tired, his face drawn, but there was something in his eyes that warmed me; something that looked just the faintest bit like hope.

            “Y-yes,” I answered, trying to make my voice come out firmly; it trembled nonetheless. “Doctor—”

            He reached out toward me brushed the backs of his fingers across my cheek. “Always crying, you over-emotional humans…” he tried to joke, though both his face and his voice were too bleak for proper teasing.

            I blinked tear-wet lashes as I stared back at him. “It hurts, Doctor…” I whispered, and watched as his face hardened. He nodded.

            “Yes, I’m sorry about that. Your mind wasn’t ready, wasn’t properly capable of taking on that sort of mental assault. To pretend otherwise was foolish—”

            “ _No_ , Doctor,” I said sharply, and he cut himself off in the middle what was probably a well-thought-out speech on the many reasons the Connection attempt had been a bad idea. “My _heart_ hurts, not my head.” His brows drew together in confusion and I sighed. “How can one man hold onto so much hatred, Doctor, when he is so full of compassion and caring and the need to protect others?”

            “Because I’ve done things no man has any right to redemption from,” he replied instantly, voice as hard as his face now.

            “Everyone has demons in their past, Doctor,” I insisted calmly, refusing to rise to his bait. “An’ everyone deserves a second chance.”

            “You really think you can look beyond my past, Rose?” he cut me off, the question coming out both vulnerable and skeptical at the same time.

            “Doctor,” I returned, reaching for his hand and pressing it to my lap between both of my own. “I am in love with you.” I stressed each word firmly, holding his gaze unflinchingly and watching the way his eyes widened slightly. “I don’t know what those words mean to you on Gallifrey, but on Earth they mean accepting a person with all of their faults and weaknesses, an’ being able to look past their previous mistakes. It means for better or for worse, Doctor. It means,” and I squeezed his fingers tightly as I finished, “that I wanna to be with you forever, in every way, always.”

            He was looking at me with a new expression in his dark brown eyes. It was bright and intense and full of wonder. “Rose…” he breathed, and then he began to speak, his eyes roving over me in wonder as his face shone with barely suppressed joy. He’d slipped into Gallifreyan again, and even though I couldn’t understand the words he was saying, somehow the Doctor’s speech was clear. He spoke with his eyes as much as any literal language, and I could see the relief and happiness that glowed from within him as he took my face in his hands and held it before him. After a few minutes he trailed off looking sheepish.

            “I’m sorry,” he murmured, but failed to look properly contrite due to the wide grin that stretched across his face. “I should have had the TARDIS translate. I said—”

            “I know what you said, Doctor,” I teased, smirking at him when he started to frown back. “Not literally, o’course, but I got the idea. You’re happy, yeah?”

            His grin widened again. “Yes.”

            “An’ we’ll be together forever, right?”

            His hands against my cheeks remained steady, but his grin faded as he became very serious. “Until the sands of time run out, Rose Tyler,” he swore, and I could hear the vow in his voice.

            “Tell me you love me…” I whispered, the teasing fading away from my own voice as my eyes drifted down toward the Doctor’s mouth.

            He whispered a string of liquid syllables into the quiet room, both completely foreign to my ears and more familiar than life itself.

            “Kiss me…”

            The Doctor’s lips were infinitely soft against mine, sweet and slow, his hands holding my head steady as he leaned closer. I pushed closer to him, my hands falling to steady myself by gripping the Doctor’s arms as I pressed against his chest. Distantly I was aware of the Doctor’s hands moving as well, one sliding down to my neck and the other running lightly across my back, but I was too distracted by way the Doctor’s kiss was changing from sweet to sultry to notice what else he was doing.

Until his nimble fingers popped the clasp on the back of my bra.

I pulled back abruptly, eyes wide as I glanced between my chest and the Doctor’s burning eyes, but he didn’t say anything, just lifted a hand to gently tip my face up so that he could kiss me again. I could feel the hunger in his kiss this time, mixed with a building desire that seemed to push against his every restraint. Then his hands came up and carefully pushed my straps off my shoulders, pulling the offending garment away.

I couldn’t meet his eyes now. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed exactly, it was just that I was suddenly wracked with a sudden horrible thought that I wouldn’t be good enough for him. After all, I was only human, who knew what Time Ladies were like? Probably far more beautiful and poised than I could ever be.

I could feel the Doctor’s hands skimming over the bare skin of my back, tugging me gently toward him, yet he kept his wandering fingers carefully away from the front of me. Before I could decide where I was relieved or disappointed with his slow pace, I was hit with the sensation of falling and realized that the Doctor was pressing me back toward the mattress. When he had me flat on my back again he pulled back slightly and just looked down at me, eyes burning into my own. The longer he stared at me the more self-conscious I began to feel, and finally I shifted, crossing my arms over my chest to hide my nakedness from him.

_I was right,_ I couldn’t help thinking, feeling a burning shame spread across my face. _It’s not the same._

“Why are you lookin’ at me like that?” I managed after another ten seconds of silence. The Doctor only frowned slightly.

“Don’t think that way…” he countered quietly, and I flinched, wondering if my thoughts were so transparent that he had read them on my face. The look he gave me at that, however, was so tender, so utterly adoring that I almost couldn’t hold his gaze. No one had ever looked at me like that my entire life. A look that said: I can’t believe that _you_ are willing to be with _me_.  “You are so beautiful, Rose… the most wondrous creature I’ve ever seen. Never think you’re anything less than amazing.” He paused again, and then reached out to take hold of my wrists in either hand, gently drawing my arms away from my chest. “Don’t hide yourself away from me…”

He settled my arms carefully against the mattress next to my head, then commenced kissing a slow, burning trail down my jaw and across my collar bone, his hands sliding teasingly down my ribs. Oh god, I couldn’t breathe. This was really happening.

My eyes fluttered closed. _Doctor…_

With no warning one hand moved higher and I pulled in a shuddering breath as he cupped my breast in one large hand, his long fingers gently massaging the malleable flesh.

_Oh god…_

He’d brought his mouth back to mine, swallowing the gasp that followed when he flicked his thumb across my nipple. My fingers fumbled blindly for a handhold as the Doctor lifted his other hand up to apply the same attention the other half of me, and my searching hands caught at the blanket and clung tightly.

_His hands…. oh sweet mother of…. does he ever know how to use those long fingers of his._ A sudden flash of the Doctor’s mouth on my breasts burst across my mind’s eye and I felt my cheeks burn. _Oh god, I hope he didn’t see that. We’re not still linked are we? That was just a one-time thing, right?_

All hope was lost, however, when the Doctor’s hot mouth descended upon my left breast and he began to swirl his tongue around, sucking lightly. My eyes flew open in shock and I was unable to stop the way my body bucked up toward his touch.

**_Not just a one-time thing, Rose,_** he thought back, a definite chuckle in his mental voice as his free hand moved to clench my hip, pinning me to the bed. **_Can’t you feel it?_** **_We’re Connected now, until the stars go out._**

I was fairly sure that my own mental voice was the equivalent of the unending “we’re having technical difficulties” beeeeeeeep on a disabled television channel after that. The Doctor switched to my other breast and I couldn’t help the moan that slid past my lips. 

**_Again…_** The thought drifted past my hazy consciousness, and I could feel the heat in the single word as the Doctor brushed his mind against mine. **_…want to hear her make that sound…_** He continued to his administrations with a renewed fervor and I tangled my hands in his hair feeling my breath coming out in pants. **_So soft…so fragile… but strong… so very strong…_** **_My Rose… my beautiful, clever, gorgeous Rose… finally…_**

And then I became aware of one of his thumbs hooking into the waistband of my knickers, teasing at the elastic and starting to tug them down my hip.

_Doctor?_ I questioned and his reply was instant, his voice drunk with desire.

**_Closer… need you, Rose… need to touch you…_** And then both his hands were pulling at the last tiny scrap of clothing separating me from him, sliding it down and off my legs before I fully realized what was happening.

He moved then, one hand nudging my legs apart as he absently ran his hand over the delicate skin of my inner thigh, sending a shiver through me. Heat was pooling in the pit of my stomach and I knew that whatever he was planning to do next he’d better do it soon or I was going to combust right there.

And then he did.

I let out another gasp of shock; seriously, there was no way _not_ to react to having the Doctor’s fingers suddenly _there_. He pressed two long fingers against me and began to stroke slow tight circles, sending shivers of fire straight through my entire body.

_Doctor!_ I gasped through the link. _What are you_ — and was nearly knocked back with the wave of desire that flooded over me. And then he was kissing me again, his masterful lips prodding mine until I opened for him and he could slide his tongue inside. His mouth become increasingly more demanding as he worked his fingers between my legs, and I was soon dizzy with the overwhelming sensations washing over me. I could feel a pressure building between my thighs and shifted restlessly against the Doctor’s aggravatingly slow, steady pace.

_Need more_ , I thought distractedly, pushing my hips up toward him as I tried to gain a more intense friction without fully understanding why I needed it. _Please, Doctor…_ I gasped, my hands fluttering over the sheets as I squirmed again. _Oh god… whatever you’re doing, don’t stop…_

His fingers started to move just the slightest bit faster, their pressure increasing just a fraction.

_Doctor!_ I could hear the desperate whine even inside my head as I tried to speed him up, tried to release the building pressure, and was rewarded with a flash of smug satisfaction. He was… he was _enjoying_ making me react this way! If I had been capable of coherent thought, let alone physical action, I might have slapped the self-assured look right off his face.

The Doctor’s reply to this thought was definite amusement, and a flick of one of his fingers that sent a rippling shudder though me. But I was beyond caring about the mental smirk that he sent me with that action, I was teetering on the edge of the universe and the stars around me pulsed to the rhythm of the Doctor’s hand.

“Open your eyes, Rose…”

The surprise of the Doctor speaking actual words into my ear instead of my mind pried my eyes back open, and I gazed blurrily up into his face as he cupped my cheek and held me still.

“Doctor…” I whimpered dizzily, my head lolling restlessly back across the pillows as sensations washed over me. “Please…”

And he was abruptly, _finally_ , working his relentless fingers between my legs with the intensity that I had been craving for ages. “ _My Rose_ …” he murmured fiercely and my eyes rolled back as he brought me to the very edge of the world… and it dropped away…

“A-always…” I agreed breathlessly, and then cried out both verbally and mentally. _DOCTOR_! My vision went white, starfire exploding through my mind as my hips spasmed, bucking up against the Doctor’s hand, and my fingers dug into the sheets in a helpless attempt to remain still.

Finally he withdrew his fingers, his hands coming up to pull my trembling frame tightly against the heat of his body, pressing my cheek against his chest so that I could hear the way his hearts were racing just like mine. It took me several minutes to catch my breath, and the Doctor spent this time alternating between caressing my face and back and placing feather soft kisses atop every part of me he could properly reach. He continued to murmur soothingly into my ear as I clung to him, the tremors wracking my body slowly fading away until all that was left was my rapidly beating heart.

“Doctor...?” I whispered, and he went still, his arms tightening around me.

“Yes, Rose?”

I tilted my head so I could look up into his eyes; he was smiling softly, fondness in his eyes. Honestly, I couldn’t think of what to say just then, but the emotions spiraling inside my head seemed to be enough. _//surprise//enjoyment//vulnerability//trust//safety//love//_

His grin widened at my eloquent response and he ducked his head to kiss me lightly. “Indeed.”

I lay in his arms for another long moment, trying to gather myself together; then I slid my hands slowly down the Doctor’s lean chest until I reached the waistband of his trousers. I fingered the button thoughtfully, then popped it open. I was halfway through tugging down his zipper when he seemed to realize what I was up to. I felt the Doctor’s body stiffen around me.

“Rose,” he said quickly, one hand sliding down my arm to gently pull my hand away. I could feel the enormous amount of restraint it took him to perform that action flash across my mind, and hid a smile as he added, “We don’t have to. Not right away… If you’re not ready…”

_Need you, Doctor…_ I sent to him, and locked my eyes on his as I reached up to run my fingers across his temple, greatly enjoying the shudder my touch sent through the Doctor’s body. His hand fumbled on my wrist and I managed to pull free and get his zipper all the way down.

**_Rose!_** he groaned, and I could hear his steady breathing start to speed up. I ran my fingers experimentally across his stomach, over the wings of his hipbones, and felt the Doctor’s arms around me tighten—a fraction of a second before he pulled me against him and rolled us over so he could look down into my eyes again.

**_Are you sure?_** he asked, and I could hear in his mental voice a need to have me give my permission, to allow him that sort of intimacy, mixed together with a desperation to take what he’d wanted for months. My own breathing sped up a little more as I met his yearning gaze with one of my own.

_Kiss me,_ I sent back and pulled his face down to mine, nipping his lower lip accidentally in my haste. A feeling of surprise, amusement, and _heat_ floated through our mental bond and the Doctor pulled back to press his lips to my neck, grazing his teeth lightly across my skin.

**_Easy, Rose… all good things in time…_ **

He brought his mouth back to mine, more demanding than before, his hands running lightly down my ribs, skating over my hips, gripping gently as he pressed my body into the mattress.  His lips followed the trail his hands had made, tracing a path down my neck, hitting a roadblock when he passed my breasts and felt the need to explore them more fully. I couldn’t hold back the little whimpers that broke past my guard as the Doctor kissed and sucked aggressively, sending a shiver through my entire body when he grazed the sensitive flesh with his teeth. And he couldn’t hold back the flashes of arousal that burst across his mind as each sound hit his ears and spurred him on.

After a considerable amount of time, he commenced with his mapping of my body, peppering my ribs with faint, sweet kisses, then moving down to my bellybutton where he pulled a little squeak out of me when he pressed a hot kiss over it and dipped his tongue inside. Hips next… his hands gripping my thighs firmly as he worked his way from side to side… and then… and then…!

My hands shot up to grab hold of the Doctor’s head, pulling his hair roughly in surprise even though I’d known on some level that this _had_ to be coming, that there couldn’t be any other destination in his mind…

**_Beautiful…_** floated faintly from his mind to mine as the Doctor gently spread my legs apart and lowered his mouth to me. **_My Rose…_** And he flicked his tongue over me, first in a maddening tease and then again, in a slow steady stroke that had my back arching hard as my fingers spasmed in his hair.

_Doctor! Oh god…_ I couldn’t speak. I could barely _think_ the words as the Doctor worked his tongue over me, licking and sucking, his long fingers clenched against my hips, pressing me back each time I bucked helplessly against his relentless mouth.

Time was nothing; everything dropped away aside from the sensation of the Doctor’s mouth and the sound of my own panting in my ears. _Don’t stop… never stop… oh mercy… oh death…. Worlds must have fallen at the behest of this mouth…_

**_Perhaps…_** came the Doctor’s languid response in the haze that was my mind. **_But it isn’t worlds that I wanted at my feet, gorgeous Rose Tyler… It’s never been worlds that I wanted to possess…_**

Abruptly I was on the precipice once more, balanced on a knife blade that one breath from the Doctor could change.

And all at once it was too much. I cried out a second time, my body not my own as I shattered helplessly under the Doctor’s touch. His hands never left my thighs, his mouth never moving from between my legs as he drank in every cry, every desperate twitch, staying with me as I spiraled through a vortex of pleasure.

When I was able to open my eyes again the Doctor had gone. Well, not gone exactly, but moved; he was standing next to the bed as he divested himself of his remaining clothing. I watched him as he undressed, the lean muscles of his arms and back moving smoothly under his skin as he straightened and turned back to face me, eyes glittering when he found me staring.

**_Not finished,_** he promised. **_Not yet…_**

**~OOO~**

**I wrote that. *blush* Welllllll? Was that enough to tide you over, dear ones? Yes, yes, more to come, as the Doctor promised… :3**


	21. Chapter 21

**Ahhhh! “Day of the Doctor” was so amazing!!! *flails* I can’t wait to go see it in theater! :D**

**You know, I keep thinking that “this chapter” is going to be the “last chapter” and then I get to the end of it and it’s not. Again. This is the third time that’s happened. I’ve come to the conclusion that this story will finish when the characters dictate and I’m just along for the ride. Onward!**

**~OOO~**

-Chapter 21-

But he didn’t move; he just stood there next to the bed, almost as if he were unsure, as if he thought that maybe… maybe I wouldn’t approve of this Time Lord body; that it was too foreign, too strange… too alien.

_You’re perfect to me,_ I sent softly, and the Doctor’s body jerked faintly. I would have missed his tiny start of surprise if I hadn’t been studying every inch of him with greedy eyes. He had thought he’d been hiding his own anxiety from me, but there were no secrets between us now.

            When he continued to hover next to the bed I sat up and swung my legs over the edge, holding my hands out him. Wordlessly he took them, gripping my fingers tightly as I pulled him gently forward so he was standing right in front of me. It was my turn to be the reassurer, my turn to make him feel at ease.

            I ran my eyes slowly over the Doctor’s body, starting with his eyes and working my way carefully across every contour of his chest and arms, over his lean hips and the muscles in his legs. I bit my lip when my eyes passed over his arousal, unable to look very long. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, exactly, it was just that… this was _the Doctor_! And heaven help me, he was so very naked and just… just _standing_ there! I had an irrational urge to cover my eyes and turn away, the whole scene felt so utterly surreal.

He held himself rigidly still as I appraised him, though I could feel the faint tremor he was working to suppress trickle down through our clasped hands.

            “Don’t think that way…” I whispered, returning my gaze to his and repeating the gentle chastisement the Doctor had given me earlier. He had been sure and confident when he’d been allowed to explore _me_ , to learn every inch of my body and discover the best way to please me, but now I was overwhelmed with the same feeling of unworthiness that I’d been battling. A feeling that, if he were allowed to connect with me this way, he’d sully me somehow.

_You are everything I’ve ever wanted, Doctor. You’re kind, and gentle, and try to be a good person._ As I continued to brush my mind against the Doctor’s my hands began to trace over his body of their own accord. I found myself standing, and reached up to take his face in my hands, tilting his head down toward me. Pushing up on my tiptoes I pressed a kiss to his lips and felt him respond hesitantly, as if, despite everything that had happened just now, everything I had let him do, it hadn’t been enough to show him how completely I trusted him.

My hands slid slowly down his chest, palms skating over his lean muscles, and the Doctor’s hands came up to lightly grip my hips, though he was careful to stand well back from me as he did so.

_I want to be one with you…_ I thought quietly, blushing a little as I voiced the thought. _I want to… to do for you what you did for me… tell me what you want…_

My heartbeat was picking up again, having only just barely settled down from my last encounter with the man in front of me, and I blushed harder as I ghosted one hand over the Doctor’s hip… and lower…

“Rose!” he hissed, when my exploring fingertips grazed lightly down the length of him. I jerked my hand back, eyes flying up to meet his as the Doctor’s fingers dug into my flesh, a mix of panic and pleasure spiking through the bond.

“I—I’m sorry!” I squeaked, horrified, feeling my cheeks burn in embarrassment. I’d never done this before; what if I was doing it wrong? I started to back away, but the Doctor caught at my wrist with one hand, tugging me back toward him while he worked to relax his other fingers around my hip.

**_No, it’s not you, Rose,_** he was quick to soothe me, his voice sounding strained even as he sent a wave of reassurance toward me. **_I mean, it_** is ** _you, but… er… not in a bad way._**

I could hear him working to steady his breathing, his thoughts a tangle of need and want pushing against his restraint. He swallowed hard, releasing my wrist to reach out and cup my face, running his thumb over my flushed cheek. He looked… nervous?

**_It’s just that… it’s… er… been a…_** He swallowed again, his hand against my cheek trembling slightly ** _. …w-while since someone has— I mean, I haven’t felt— that is, I liked it but… I—I just didn’t expect…_**

He was flustered. My eloquent Doctor who always had a speech prepared, was always ready with some flippant comeback or quip, was at a complete loss for words. And it was because of something _I_ had done to him. I felt my lips quirk into a tiny, wicked smile as a sudden spike of bravery coursed through me. Taking a deep breath, I held the Doctor’s liquid brown eyes with my own and reached down to, very deliberately, take him in hand and drag my fingers slowly down him from top to tip.

The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up at this, and his eyes widened in astonishment at my boldness. I was pretty shocked at my nerve myself. The shudder that jolted through him at my touch was accompanied by a rush of heat through the bond, mirrored in the Doctor’s burning expression. His hands tightened around me instantaneously and his breathing was now coming in short pants past abruptly gritted teeth.

**_Rose Tyler, you cheeky—_** he began darkly, then hissed again when I cut him off, running my tongue over my lower lip as I experimentally ran my hand up and down him a third time, causing the Doctor’s hips to thrust lightly toward me. A truly mischievous grin tugged at my lips at that, but the Doctor’s hands were suddenly iron vices around my wrists, pulling my hands behind my back and pressing my body flush against his chest in one smooth motion. I let out a little gasp of surprise at the swiftness of the action and felt a chuckle rumble in the Doctor’s chest.

**_You really don’t want to play that game, Rose,_** he said warningly, and I could feel his previous apprehension melting away as a growing desire overrode it. I shivered at the heat in the Doctor’s voice, not to mention the fact that his new body position pressed something long and firm against my thigh.

_Or what?_ I couldn’t help quipping, making my eyes as round and innocent as possible. The Doctor raised an eyebrow at that, locking my wrists together with one hand and using the other to press me against him, rocking his hips into me just enough that I could feel exactly _what_ “or what” meant.

His lips twitched at the stuttering gasp I made at the sensation of feeling him brush against me and he leaned down so that his mouth was by my ear. “You are _not_ …” he murmured lowly, his warm breath ticking the bare skin of my shoulder and sending a shiver through me, “making it easy… for me to take this _slow_ , Rose…” He pressed his lips softly to my skin, just below my ear. “And I _want_ to go slowly…” **_I’ve waited so very long, you see…_**

I swallowed hard at the Doctor’s words, feeling a rush of heat flood through me, then trembled when I felt him bring his lips to the hollow of my throat and place a feather-soft kiss there.

**_I want to be one with you, too, Rose Tyler._** The Doctor’s presence in my mind was suddenly everywhere, hot and demanding. **_Connected in all ways. Knowing every facet of your mind, body, and soul…_**

Closing the distance between us, he released my wrists and took my face in his hands again. He liked to do this, I could now sense in the back of his thoughts, to hold me still so he could just look at me, just enjoy this first face this face had seen. The first face this face had loved.

 He lowered his mouth to mine slowly, this movement, however, only served to press the rest of the Doctor’s body tight up against my front. My hands fluttered helplessly as he coaxed my mouth open under his, and they ended up settling against the Doctor’s elbows as he bent to kiss me again. I couldn’t help the feelings that caused. Really, it was his own fault.

_Want you, Doctor…_ I begged silently as he continued to kiss me leisurely, exploring my mouth with his lips and tongue, tasting every inch of me. My thoughts were a jumble of half-formed sentences. _Too slow… hurry up… I want… I want— ooooh... on second thought… like slow… but need… need to be closer… please, please…_

**_Slowly Rose…_** The Doctor’s voice in my head was amused yet firm. **_I won’t rush this. It’s too important for you…_** There was a pause and then he added, almost as if he couldn’t help it, **_And for me._**

_And suddenly there was a flash of an amber sky, red grass… a glowing Citadel encased in a clear shield like a giant bubble. The scene changed; now there was a tall building much like an ancient Greek temple, complete with portico-style porches and marble pillars lining the front. The amber sky had faded some with the coming night, and the breeze that blew past was sweet. The building’s heavy wooden doors at the top of the wide steps were slightly ajar. As I stared up at it, I felt like I should know this place, as if the Doctor had told me about it before…_

_Then the scene changed again and my perspective was now lower, as if I were sitting or kneeling on the ground of the marble room. I glanced around and found the building empty of everything aside from the pillars that lined the inner sanctum, draped with gauzy gold curtains that provided a minimal shield from prying eyes, a scattering of flickering candles, and the pillow on which I knelt.  I looked down and found myself wearing a silk and velvet robe made of scarlet and gold and belted at my waist, my blond hair cascading loosely about my shoulders. I felt like I was waiting for something important to occur._

_Then a man dressed in an identical robe, yet with a hood drawn up to hide his face, strode toward me from the shadows. He was escorted by two other men who carried tall staves in their left hands, their lined faces and graying hair were shadowed in the flickering light of the wall sconces which had flared to life with their arrival and petered out with their departure. They halted several feet back from where I knelt and allowed the man to cross to me before taking their leave._

_“Please kneel,” I heard my voice say, and it was liquid and musical. It almost didn’t feel like me speaking. The man knelt on the pillow opposite me and placed his hands palms-down on his lap, his head bowed low. I appraised him, eyes running over his still, steady form as he waited for me to speak again._

_“Why have you come?” I asked him, and my voice came out dignified and regal, despite the anxiety I worked to hide. I wanted to see who hid behind the cowl of the ceremonial robe. I needed to know…_

_“I desire to be Connected with you,” he said, speaking the Words of Binding, and I_ knew _his voice, rich and confident, unshaken by the coolness born by mine. “I bare my soul before your judgment and my heart before your grace. Be I worthy, so shall it be.” And then he reached up and pushed back his hood, and the Doctor’s gentle, handsome face was lit by the soft light of the candles._

_“Give me your hands,” I instructed, and he did so, gripping my smaller hands in his own and holding them firmly. I met his eyes then, and saw in them a heartbreaking tenderness. “So shall it be…” I echoed softly._

An electric shock raced through my veins as the dream-memory flashed into nothingness and I found myself trembling in the Doctor’s arms, warmth flooding my chest and a sweet pleasantness cocooning my thoughts. I didn’t know how to describe the feelings that suddenly filled me; it was almost as if I’d suddenly been returned something I’d been missing but hadn’t realized its absence until just this moment. The Doctor was eying me carefully, his brown eyes warm, yet a little startled too, as if he had been just as surprised as me at the scene that had just taken place.

“Was…” I whispered, slumping a little in the Doctor’s arms as I met his gaze with wide eyes. “Was that Gallifrey?”

The Doctor nodded. “Yes.”

“I… I thought that…” I frowned, trying to recall the scene. “That girl, was she me?”

“In a way, yes,” he answered, and I felt the Doctor’s arms holding me tightly to him, cradling me in one arm as he reached down to brush my hair out of my eyes.

“You were there, too,” I added, frowning up at him in confusion. “How could we both be there together?”

“Do you know where that place was?” he asked instead of answering, and I shook my head.

“No. I mean, yes. I mean…” My brows drew together in concentration as I tried to work things out. “I mean… it felt familiar somehow, like I should’ve known it…”

The Doctor smiled gently, and I was suddenly aware of the steady beating of his heart and the light in his eyes. He looked completely at peace. “I told you about that place once, Rose,” he said quietly, his eyes running over my face, drinking in my expression. “The Meeting Hall in the Citadel on Gallifrey…” His smile widened at the recognition in my eyes.

“But… but how—?” I started, still utterly lost. “But that’s impossible for us—for me—!”

“Ahhh…” he drawled, a maddeningly familiar look of knowing amusement flickering behind his eyes. “Physically yes, you’re correct, Rose. But _psychically_ …”

“I don’t understand,” I said, still reeling a little from the intensely real-feeling experience. “Doctor…”

He straightened and pulled back from me slightly, growing serious, though the radiant joy behind his eyes was still there. “The short story that we’re now fully Connected.”

“Fully?” I echoed, frowning slightly. “But before…didn’t we—I mean, I thought that we…”

The Doctor smiled gently and reached out to take one of my hands in his. “The long version of the explanation is that up until just now our Connection was tenuous, fragile. We’d made the effort and it had worked, but despite everything there was a possibility that it wouldn’t hold. When you found yourself in the Meeting Hall with me it was because both of us had finally let go of all reservations about ourselves, holding nothing back and, in return, being completely accepted by the other person.”

“But how did we get there?” I insisted, unable to let that part go. “Gallifrey is gone, Doctor; isn’t it?”

“The TARDIS provided an illusion for us,” the Doctor said after a pause, and I saw a spark of sadness in his eyes, mixed in with the happiness. “When she sensed that we’d both fully submitted to each other she sent a dreamscape to both of us, so that we could experience the ceremony as if we were back on Gallifrey.”

I glanced past the Doctor, up at the ceiling of his bedroom, and smiled softly. “Thank-you,” I whispered to the TARDIS, and felt a vibrant hum shiver through my mind. It felt stronger than before. When I turned back, the Doctor was watching me.

“How do you feel?” he asked, and he sounded a little anxious. I could feel his consciousness in the back of my mind, prodding at my own, curious yet cautious. “Do you feel any different?”

I smiled back at him. “You told me once how it would work, remember?” I paused to lift his fingers, twined in mine, and place his palm over my heart. “Here…” I raised his other hand and pressed it to my temple. “And here.”

**_Rose…_** And I was abruptly enveloped in a sensation of absolute bliss as the Doctor held his hands against me.

And then he was pulling his hands free, his arms going around my back as his mouth crashed down hard on mine. I met the Doctor’s heated kisses as desperately as I could, pushing my body against his chest and winding my hands into his hair. He couldn’t seem to get enough of touching me; his fingers floated restlessly across my skin, pulling me against him as if I were the one thing tethering him to this universe. His tongue battled my own as he seemed to fight an internal war between gentleness and need, but I didn’t care. I wanted him to be so lost in his desire for me that he finally stopped holding back.

I was so distracted by the Doctor’s mouth that I didn’t realize he had picked me up until he was already settling me back on the bed and moving to lean over me. I stared up into his beautiful face for an eternal moment, lifting a trembling hand to stroke my fingers gently along his jaw as he held his body over me, eyes roving across my face.

**_Are you sure?_** he asked again, and I could see in the way he looked at me that I was precious in the Doctor’s eyes. He trailed one hand slowly over my thigh, sending a delicious shiver though me. I couldn’t speak but managed to nod, unable to look away from his eyes. When he moved his hands to slowly nudge my legs further apart my eyes fluttered closed and my heart rate picked up.

_Oh god…_ I fisted my hands in the sheets and tried to relax. _Doctor…_

He ghosted his hands along my thighs before settling them back on my hips. **_Breathe, Rose._** He stroked my hips for a few moments, waiting for me to try and calm down a little, then added, a desperate sort of heat in his voice, **_Look at me; I need to see you…_**

My eyes blinked open at that and locked on the Doctor’s. He steadied his hands against my hips then met my eyes and held them, innumerable emotions spinning in his warm gaze as he lowered his body to mine. I couldn’t hold back a gasp at the first sensation of the Doctor pushing inside me. The feeling was hot and full and a host of other sensations that I had no name for. He moved slowly, carefully, his arms maneuvering to support his body over me as he inched deeper, until finally he let out a low moan of satisfaction and buried himself completely in me.

I couldn’t move for a long moment, my whole body trembling at the Doctor’s nearness, at this feeling of complete intimacy. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath too until the Doctor’s anxious voice broke through the torrent of sensations whirling through my mind and I let it out in a soft whoosh.

**_Are you alright?_** he was asking uneasily; above me, his body had gone rigidly still. **_Am I hurting you?_**

It took me several long seconds to compose a response to this question, because I was too lost in the feeling of having the Doctor inside me. He felt hard and strong, and filled me completely.

_No…_ I breathed, my eyes still closed and my mental voice a whisper as I struggled to get my tangled thoughts under control. _No…_ I repeated. _…feels… you feel… good…_

At my words the Doctor’s lips curved in obvious relief, and he moved to settle his weight more fully between my legs. Then he lifted one hand to run his thumb over my kiss-swollen bottom lip, and at the same time I felt him brushing his mind against mine, both protective and fierce. Then he bent his head and brushed his nose along my neck, inhaling deeply before placing a series of feather-soft kisses along my jaw as his thoughts became a rush of words.

**_…Sweet… smells so good… so beautiful…_** He kissed my throat with infinite tenderness. **_So long… waited… so, so long… finally… mine… my Rose…_**

 Slowly I became aware that the Doctor’s breathing was heavier than before, though he held himself motionless with the discipline of a solider even as he kissed his way infinitely slowly across my collarbone and back up toward my searching lips, and some distant part of my brain told me that it was taking him an enormous amount of self-control to remain still while I adjusted to everything.

_Doctor…_ I breathed, reaching for him mentally as my body began to relax from the initial shock, pleasurable though it had been, and a new sort of yearning flooded through me. I lifted a hand from where my fingers had been gripping his arms and traced my fingertips slowly across his temple. _…Want you…_

Despite the overpowering _need_ that my words sent crackling through his thoughts, the Doctor’s arms around me remained firm yet gentle. He shifted his body carefully, one hand coming up to cradle the back of my head, threading through my hair, the other sliding down my neck as he kissed me, slow and deep, his tongue sliding over mine in a languid caress.

**_Want you, too… always… wanted you…_** drifted across my mind in time with the sweetness of the Doctor’s kiss, and then he pulled out and reset himself deeper than before, drawing a second stuttering gasp from me which he swallowed with a kiss.

_Ohhhhh………_

I could feel the rush of emotions flitting through the Doctor’s head at every sound he pulled from me. There was raw desire, lust, want… but mixed in with them was joy, relief, acceptance, and a wave of warmth that could only be identified as the most extraordinary love…

He was slow at first, careful to keep his movements soft and gentle, not wanting to rush me or scare me with the passion I could feel simmering at the back of his mind. He held me tightly, his hands stroking my face, my shoulders, my arms, as he kissed me, expressing his devotion with absolute tenderness. I responded in kind, my hands exploring the Doctor’s face, running over his smooth-shaven jaw and carding softly through his silky hair as he rocked his hips gently against me; and always, _always_ , our eyes were running over each other in wonder.

It might have been minutes or hours later, but eventually I could feel the Doctor’s measured rhythm begin to change, to become slightly faster. There was a certain tension in the way he held me to him now. He’d shifted his body so he could prop himself up on one arm, could thrust a little harder than he had before, and I could feel a familiar pressure starting to build between my thighs.

_Doctor…_ I sighed, feeling my legs shift automatically to accommodate his new pace, and then the Doctor’s hand was sliding down my thigh, coaxing my leg up so he could wrap it around his waist, could push deeper.

I could hear him speaking then, his words a mumbled chant in my ear as his breathing became heavier. I slipped my arms around his neck and clung to him as he moved against me, each thrust brushing tantalizingly against my throbbing core, enough to send a shiver through me but never enough to bring the relief I found myself craving once more. I moaned against his neck and he rocked harder, his words coming faster now. He’d started speaking Gallifreyan again, and I could hear my name mixed in among the liquid language spilling from the Doctor’s lips. He pressed his forehead against mine and I could feel his panting breath waft over my face as he picked up speed.

_Doctor… please…_ I found myself thinking without really meaning to, without having any control over my thoughts at all at the erotic shivers of pleasure shooting through me each time the Doctor pushed into me. _…please, I want to… want to understand…_ I didn’t have to say what I needed to understand, I could tell that he knew at once, but it took him a few moments to respond.

**_…my soul before your judgment… my heart before your grace…_** he translated after a few seconds, and I felt a surge of satisfaction thrill through me at the effort it took him to speak even inside my head at this very moment, lost as he was within me. The words were weighted with meaning, and I could feel the promise echoing behind them. I made my own vow.

_Never have I found someone more worthy…_ I swore fiercely, trying to pull him closer to me. I might have said more, but the Doctor’s movements were becoming more erratic, less controlled, and I could feel the growing need for release rising rapidly between both of us. He stopped talking now, one arm sliding from around my back to fumble at the headboard, his other hand clenched around my hip as I found my body automatically moving with him, meeting him thrust for thrust.

Words were lost to us both now. I was vaguely aware of the wild, animalistic sort of grunts coming from the Doctor as passion overrode reason in a wave and his grip on me became almost painful; somehow I couldn’t bring myself to mind. I clamped my thighs against his rocking hips, all rational thought stripped away. There was only this.

**_…Mine… My Rose… forever…_ **

The Doctor’s sudden fierce thoughts broke though the passion-haze clouding my mind seconds before his grip on me tightened and he began to thrust helplessly against me, hard and fast. I dug my nails into the bare flesh of his shoulders, not caring if I left marks.

_Doctor… oh god….please don’t stop…._

The hand on my hip moved suddenly, sliding between our writhing bodies in a quick, sure motion, and my entire consciousness stuttered wildly at the sensation of the Doctor’s cool, firm fingers abruptly stroking me once more. This extra touch brought me to the edge so quickly that I was half-afraid I’d shatter before he was finished. It took everything in me to cling to the edge of reason with my fingertips.

Over me, the Doctor was lost in in his own need, hurtling toward release in a whirl of reckless abandon. I reached for him with my mind, unable to speak, to make any sound other than the desperate little moans that broke past my lips, and felt him reach back with a fierce, possessive, protectiveness that would have left me breathless if I hadn’t been far beyond that already.

_Doctor… my Doctor…_

**_Rose!_ **

And then the universe exploded around us.

I heard myself cry out as my vision went dark, sight stolen away by the stars bursting before my eyes, and I could feel my body seize up in the most exquisite way. Somewhere nearby I could hear the Doctor shouting, cursing and blessing my name in every language he possessed as his body shuddered violently and he buried his face against my neck.

It felt as if the whole world was spinning around me and it was all I could do now to lay limply back against the bed and ride out the whirlwind. As my breathing gradually steadied, I slowly came back to myself, blinking in the soft light. I turned my head, searching for the Doctor, and met a pair of warm, brown eyes very close to mine. The Doctor had rolled off me after we both rode out the wave of our mutual pleasure, and had now settled himself on his side, his face only inches away as he watched me intently.

My whole body trembled at the look in the Doctor’s eyes. He reached out to stroke my cheek with the backs of his fingers, a soft smile playing about his lips, and I shivered, partially from his touch and partially from the absence of his body heat. As if he could tell what I was thinking, and all things considered, he probably could, the Doctor’s arms came up around me, pulling my body toward his chest as he drew the sheets up over us. I curled into his embrace, laying my cheek over one of his hearts as he wrapped one arm around my back and continued to gently stroke my face with his free hand.

I wanted this moment to last forever, just the pair of us entwined in this space, holding each other and knowing that nothing could ever hurt us here. The Doctor’s hearts beat beneath me, a steady rhythm in my ear, and I sighed contentedly.

“Rose?”

I was half surprised that the Doctor had spoken out loud, considering most of our conversation in the last hour had been internal, but found that despite the intimacy of our mental Connection I still craved the warm sound of his natural voice.

“Mmmm?” I murmured sleepily, realizing with some surprise how very exhausted I felt. The Doctor’s fingers sifted through my hair, playing idly with a few locks.

“Are you…ok?” he asked quietly. I could hear the tender concern in his question and felt my heart swell. Even after everything we’d been through, his first thought was still for my personal comfort.

“Yes,” I whispered back, not wanting to break the magic of this moment by speaking any louder. “Are you?”

I could feel him try and stifle his amusement at my innocent response, though the faint rumble of laughter that shook his chest beneath my head caused me to turn my face to look up at him. He shifted then, and bent down to place a kiss on my forehead.

“Yes, Rose, I’m fine.” He had a look of drowsy contentment on his face and I could feel his hand on my back tracing lazy circles over my warm skin. “More than fine, really; no bloke has ever been more fine than I am at this moment. Perfect, really, would be a better word to use, yes, or blissful. Or—” He broke off as he glanced down at me and met my eye, then he grinned a little bashfully.

I felt a slow smile tug at my lips at the Doctor’s familiar rambling. I hadn’t realized it before just now, but there had been a tiny part of me that had worried that things between us would be different after… after this. But they weren’t, not really.

“Doctor?” I cut in, tracing my hand slowly over the plains of his chest, watching it rise and fall beneath my fingers. He raised an eyebrow at me in question, waiting patiently for me to speak. “I…love you…”

I’d meant to say something else, to somehow try and tell him how completely amazing he’d been maybe, or how utterly safe and protected I felt laying there in his arms, but those three words summed everything up in the end. I felt the Doctor’s hands still against me, then pull me closer, tighter, as he reached down and gently tilted my head back so he could reach my lips.

He kissed me softly, telling me in that single touch just how just he treasured me. “Quite right, too,” he murmured against my lips, and I felt my heart give a thump. Then he settled back against the pillows and tucked me closer into his embrace as sleep claimed us both.

**~OOO~**

            I woke to a tickling sensation on the back of my neck. Blinking blurrily, I squinted in the dimness of an unfamiliar room and tensed for a moment, unsure where I was. Glancing down, I found myself wrapped snuggly in light blue sheet with an arm casually slung over my hips, holding me close against something firm and warm. It took me several seconds to figure out that the arm wasn’t my own, and several more before I remembered where I was. And why.

My eyes shot open and I jerked my head up, discovering the Doctor sitting up in bed next to me, his reading glasses on and a book in one hand.

            “Good morning,” he greeted me, as I shoved my hair out of my face and stared at him.

            “H-hi…” I mumbled, having twisted toward him when realization set in and now discovered I’d basically tangled my body impossibly in the sheets. The Doctor regarded me with amusement.

            “Hi.” Then he resumed watching me silently, a smile playing about his lips.

            I was in the Doctor’s bed. I was in the Doctor’s bed _with_ the Doctor. And last night we’d…

            “Hi,” I repeated on autopilot, and the Doctor’s lips curved.

            “Welllll, now that we’ve gotten the pleasantries out of the way…”

            I could feel the heat radiating from my cheeks as I glanced down at my sheet-clad body and then over at the Doctor who was sprawled casually next to me, his chest and legs bare, and a tangle of sheets stretched across his hips. I could feel him watching me again as I looked him over, waiting for my reaction.

“How long was I asleep?” I asked, because that was the safest thing to say at the moment. The Doctor smiled. “A couple of hours.”

            “Oh.” I was silent for a minute, trying to think of something else to say. Next to me, the Doctor set his book on a side table and plucked his glasses off his nose to set them on top of it.

            **_Are you alright, Rose?_**

            My lips parted when he spoke inside my head, and I quickly lifted my head so I could meet the Doctor’s eyes. The expression in them was kind but tinged with concern. He was worried.

            _I’m—_ I started, but couldn’t finish. I was feeling so many things right now I couldn’t put them all into words. The Doctor reached over slowly and tucked a lock of my blonde hair behind one ear so he could properly see my face.

            **_What’s wrong?_** he asked gently, his face serious now. **_Please, Rose, talk to me…_** Then suddenly his expression darkened and he pulled back slightly, studying my face closely. **_Last night…_** he said slowly, **_Did I… did I hurt you?_**

            He looked so stricken that it shocked me out of my own bashfulness and into speech. “No!” My protest came out in a loud burst and I cringed back from the Doctor’s touch, as if I could escape the embarrassment of my own voice. Ducking my head, I tried to hide behind my hair. _No…_ I repeated through the link, finding it easier to hold this conversation when I didn’t have to do anything more than think the words. _You were… amazing…_ And I felt a rush of emotions flood through me as the memory of the Doctor making love to me flashed through my mind again. Warmth… passion… tenderness… heat…

            The Doctor’s mind and body relaxed next to me, though I could still feel an echo of his earlier worry hovering in the background. **_Then what’s got you so upset, Rose?_** he asked again. He answered himself almost immediately though. **_Oh…_**

I looked at him then, confused at the single word he’d just uttered. _Oh??_

            He looked back at me, his expression becoming achingly tender at the vulnerability in my own. He pulled me gently closer before explaining. **_Rose, you’re not—I mean, you can’t possibly actually be worried that you_** — he started, his fingers stroking lightly down my arm as I curled against his chest, and I couldn’t meet his eyes. I turned my face into his shoulder and covered it with both hands.

            Under me, the Doctor shifted, and I could feel his arms coming around me to tug me into a sitting position. When I still refused to look at him, he settled his hands on my upper arms, rubbing them soothingly.

            “Rose,” he said quietly, and I tensed at the sound of his voice.

_Oh god, I was terrible. He regrets it. It was a huge mistake—_

“You were gorgeous.” His voice was rich and deep, and sent a tingle through my entire body. He went on: “Amazing. Spectacular!”

At this boisterous proclamation I peeked through my fingers. The Doctor was gripping my shoulders and ducking his head down so his eyes would be on level with mine if I decided to look at him. When he saw me watching him, he grinned. I felt a smile start to pull at my own lips. He looked so earnest, with his wide brown eyes and hair that somehow still managed to look artfully messy, as if he’d meant to wake up with it that way, that I began to consider the idea that he might be telling the truth.

            “I should have said something earlier,” he added, and dropped one hand to rub at the back of his neck. I lowered my hands at this sign of awkwardness and finally looked at the Doctor full in the face again. His other hand slid down my arm to twin his fingers in mine. “Rose, you are the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen in all of my lives, and it would take me at least as many of them to try and explain to you how utterly perfect you were last night; though I’d be happy to try if you like…” His eyes were dancing, but his words swirled around my head like a tangible promise.

I blinked at him. Beautiful? I was a sweaty, tussled, bed-headed mess.

The Doctor’s eyes darkened in a different, yet newly familiar, way, and he lifted his free hand back up to cup my face. **_And what do you think caused you to look that way, Miss Tyler?_**

I blushed at the look in the Doctor’s eyes and the implication of his question. “Oh, shu’ up!” I muttered, fighting back a smile, and shoved lightly at his shoulder.

The Doctor’s grin lit his whole face, and his arms came around me as he pulled me into his chest and rolled the pair of us over onto the mattress again. “Why don’t you make me?” he teased in a low voice, then ducked his head down and kissed me deeply.

**~OOO~**

            **Everyone all together now: “About flipping time!” XD I hope you all liked it… I worked on this chapter for ages, trying to make everything come out right. But as you know, all good things can’t last…**

**As always, why don’t you click the button below and tell me what you think? :)**


	22. Chapter 22

**Hello??? *taps mike* Anyone out there? I’M SO, SO SORRY ABOUT THE WAIT for this chapter! :( Christmas was busy and then life got in the way, but here it is at last! :) I’m not entirely happy with it, but you’ve been waiting so long I’ve decided to post it now. I hope people are still reading this!**

**~OOO~**

-Chapter 22-

The Doctor was the sort of man who could make anyone feel special. He’d made me feel like the most important person in the universe on several occasions during our travels together, but lying in bed with him this morning, letting him stroke my hair and kiss me, both softly and with echoes of his early passions, made me feel like there was no one else he’d rather be with. Something that I certainly reciprocated. Eventually, however, certain needs arose and I sat up. The Doctor watched me curiously.

“I need to take a shower,” I told him, casting about his room for the bathroom. I’d so rarely been inside the Doctor’s personal space that I didn’t actually know where it was. I’d seen him on occasion with wet hair, so I knew he must have facilities, but even if I could find them, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get there. My clothes were scattered around the room and despite our recent activities, I hadn’t completely lost all my shyness and didn’t exactly feel brave enough to seek out a shower completely in the nude.

Spying the Doctor’s brown suit jacket laying near the bed, I maneuvered myself toward it still wrapped in my sheet. When I had slipped it on over my shoulders and had the front held closed with one hand, I glanced back at the Doctor. He was lying back against his pillows, watching me with an interested expression.

“What?” I asked, hovering next to the bed and frowning at him.

A slow grin unfurled on the Doctor’s face, and he smirked slightly, watching me from beneath hooded eyes. “Would it be inappropriate of me to tell you that that’s now my favorite jacket?”

I turned away quickly so that he wouldn’t see the smile I swallowed back, and said sternly, “Extremely.”

“Right, then I shall refrain from saying anything.”

I spied a door across the room and padded barefoot across the floor toward it, feeling the Doctor’s gaze on me the entire way. Once inside the bathroom I closed the door and turned to face the mirror. My hair was atrocious, but my eyes were bright and my cheeks had a light flush to them. I glanced at the reflection of my legs, bare from the thighs down, covered by the Doctor’s jacket and then lifted on hand to touch my lips. They still felt a little swollen, not that I’d minded the reason for that.

I moved toward the shower, a walk-in space with a glass wall on one side and a grey-brown marble on the inner portion. A silver showerhead came out of the wall on the right and a dim light glowed in the ceiling. I pulled open the door and turned on the taps, adjusting the water temperature. The whole room reminded me of a posh hotel suite, and I had to shake my head that I kept forgetting the extent of Time Lord Technology and that whole ‘bigger on the inside’ mentality. Just then there was a knock on the bathroom door.

I turned toward the sound just as the door opened a crack and the Doctor’s voice floated through. “Rose?”

I stared at the space between the door and the wall. I couldn’t see the Doctor so assumed that he was standing just out of view. What could he possibly want right now that couldn’t wait twenty minutes? I glanced back at the pattering water hitting the marble-tiled walls like a steady, summer rain, and then back toward the door.

“Y-yes?” I called back, my voice catching slightly as a new thought occurred to me. He didn’t—I mean, he couldn’t actually—not that I thought I would mind if he wanted—

The door slid open another few inches and the Doctor poked his face around it. I could see that his chest was still bare, but he wore a towel around his slim hips. “I was thinking, if you didn’t mind…” And he pushed the door all the way open and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind him as the space rapidly filled with steam. “I could use a quick wash-up, too…” His eyes held an invitation and a promise, but he stayed near the door, obviously not intending to move any closer unless I gave my permission.

I glanced between the man by the door and the shower behind me, and felt my cheeks heat with more than just the temperature of the room. Then, before I could change my mind, I turned back toward the shower, shrugging out of the Doctor’s pinstriped jacket and letting the material pool on the floor at my feet. Even over the sound of the water I could hear the sound the Doctor made when he saw me.

I stepped into the shower and moved under the stream of hot water, hoping that the heat of it would tamp down the goose bumps that had risen when the Doctor had come into the bathroom just now. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him move his hands to his waist and tug at the white towel, letting it fall to the marble-tiled floor, and quickly averted my gaze. Behind me, the hinges on the glass door squeaked slightly as the Doctor pulled it wide enough to slip past, and then closed it again.

I kept my back firmly toward the Doctor and closed my eyes, letting the steady rain of hot water run over my head, muting the sounds around me. For a long moment I wondered if I’d misunderstood his intent, if the Doctor _had_ actually only wanted to clean-up, but then I felt his presence brushing gently against the back of my mind.

**_I couldn’t stand being away from you…_** he murmured, his hands coming up to gently settle on my hips, sliding a little on my water-slick skin. I kept my eyes closed, reveling in the sensation of the Doctor’s wet chest pressing lightly against my back as he bent his head to kiss my neck.

_I wasn’t planning on staying in here forever,_ I pointed out, striving for nonchalance despite the fact that one of the Doctor’s hands was skimming lightly over my stomach to cup my breast from behind. I gasped, a shiver jolting through my entire body despite the heat of the water beating against my skin. This sort of caress felt entirely different with the added stimulation of water.

**_I’m not sure I’d mind if you did,_** he murmured back, the heat in his mental words a little more intense than before, and his other hand came up to cup my other breast. He massaged them both gently, ducking his head around so that he could kiss my neck again where it met my shoulder. **_As long as I could stay here with you…_**

My knees shook and I had to lean back against the Doctor in order to steady myself. _If you keep doing that,_ I managed to think back to him, my head lolling back against his chest, _you might just get your wish._

It really was amazing, I thought privately, how naturally speaking to the Doctor in my head actually felt. You might have thought that having an extra voice in your head would be distracting, or invasive, but somehow it wasn’t. It felt right. And perhaps that was what made the Connection Ceremony so intimate, the joining of two minds was such a personal thing that you had to be beyond sure that you would be able to share everything with that person.

The Doctor’s low chuckle reverberated through his chest. _**My beautiful Rose…**_

The words wrapped around me like an embrace and I blinked my eyes open to look up into the Doctor’s face. He was watching me with a look of utter adoration, as if he still couldn’t believe that I was real. Then he reached past me and picked up a washcloth from a bar on the wall and held it under the water until it was wet-through. I was still watching him curiously when he moved his hand to gently stretch out my arm so he could run the cloth carefully over my skin, and I felt my heart stutter at this new sensation. Somehow, despite the mundaneness of what the Doctor was doing, the whole task felt enormously sensual.

The Doctor finished with my left arm and moved on to my right, starting at my shoulder and then carefully washing each bit of my skin right down to the wrist. Then he stepped back and started to slowly sponge my back, gathering my damp hair and pushing it over one shoulder to clear his canvas.

**_I keep thinking I know every inch of you,_** the Doctor’s voice floated through my head, his arms reaching around me to run his cloth over the soft curves of my breasts and the swoops of my belly and hips, **_but every time I realize there is so much more to learn…_**

I wanted to say something meaningful back to him, but then he stepped back and knelt down on the wet tiled floor, one hand skimming lightly up and down my outer thigh before gently gripping my leg to steady me. It was then that I realized my knees were trembling, and I had to reach out and press my palm against the slick marble wall in an effort to keep my body upright.

**_So many times you could have run away, gone back to your simple life, to your safe life…_** he continued, caressing my calf and then running his cloth higher, to wash the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. I swallowed a gasp and my hand slipped a little against the wall. The Doctor moved to my other leg to repeat the process.

_Wh-what’s life without a little mess and adventure…_ I reminded him, a little unsteadily, echoing a conversation we’d had what felt like eons ago. _Anywhere you go, Doctor…_

I felt him pull his cloth away, and when he didn’t move to touch me again I turned to look at him. He was still kneeling in a puddle on the floor of the shower room, but far enough back that he was out of range of the water’s spray. When I turned to face him, his eyes darkened.

Licking my lips a little shyly, I lowered myself to the floor and reached out to take the washcloth from his unresisting fingers. Not quite meeting his eyes, I began to run it gently over the lean muscles of his arms, the smooth planes of his chest, and the wings of his hips. His hands came up to settle at my waist as I knelt between his thighs, and I glanced down at his touch. Which was, of course, when I realized that his hands weren’t the only things that had come up at my nearness.

_Oh!_ I found myself thinking with some surprise, staring perhaps a little longer than was appropriate. The Doctor said nothing to this, and I wondered if he simply couldn’t help it or was waiting for me to make the first move this time.

Curious, I gently ran my cloth over him, and the Doctor made a sound in the back of his throat, his hands at my waist slipping against my wet skin. I lifted my eyes to his face and found the Doctor holding himself very still, glittering eyes slightly dilated. I wanted to make him make that sound again, that sound that indicated, however briefly, that he wasn’t in control. I dropped my cloth to the floor and reached out for him, taking him in hand at the same time as I leaned forward and carefully placed my lips on his.

**_Rose…!_ **

The Doctor met my kiss greedily, his arms coming up to pull me closer almost immediately. I steadied myself with one palm against his shoulder, and pumped my hand up and down his length once, twice. He let out a low growl, his hips hitching toward me and his hands around me constricting. I repeated the motion, lost in a wave of feelings coming from the Doctor’s mind.

**_She’s… she’s… Rose, what are you—Oooh… oooh…. Rose, you are gorgeous… y—you beautiful creature… how do you— how do you know how to— keep doing that… keep… keep doing…ohhh…_ **

His hips hitched again, and then again, a little more aggressively than before, and he buried a hand in my wet hair, plunging his tongue into my mouth with a muffled groan. It was a curious and not entirely unwelcome feeling to hold the means to bring someone so powerful to their knees before you, and I found that I enjoyed pushing the Doctor into utter abandonment.

His response to this enlightened moment I was having was a tightening of his grip on my hips, his forehead pressed against mine as the warm spray of the shower rained down on us. The Doctor’s breathing in my ear was magnified by the water, and his hips were thrusting toward my hand almost beyond his control now.

_Want to see you…_ _Doctor…_ I whispered, brushing my mind over his with a firm stroke, my own desire rising rapidly. The Doctor’s eyes snapped to mine, burning so darkly they were almost black. I could see in them that he was blazing toward release with the speed of freight train.

**_You are magnificent…_** His words washed over me in a wave at the same moment that the Doctor threw his head back with a roar that echoed off the marble walls, crushing my body to him.

**~OOO~**

I lay sprawled across the Doctor’s wet chest, my hair in my face and the shower still pelting down on my back. He was stretched out on the tiled floor, his arms around me, pressing my body tightly against his, and I could feel the rapid rise and fall of the Doctor’s chest beneath me, his body shaking slightly as I lifted one hand to stroke my fingertips across his temple. He blinked his eyes open with a slightly stupefied look at my touch.

**_You are full of surprises…_** he thought up at me, his long fingers gently pushing my hair out of my eyes. I could feel his unsteady breathing beneath me and my lips curved upward.

_You have no idea..._ I smiled back at him, and bent down to kiss him, tasting water on his lips.

It was some time later that we both managed to actually get our washing up properly completed, and I kicked the Doctor out of his bathroom so I could finish getting ready in peace. When I emerged cautiously into his bedroom twenty minutes later, having shampooed and blow-dried my hair, and wrapped one of his fluffy, oversized white towels around my body in place of a robe, the Doctor was nowhere to be seen. If I’d had to hazard a guess, I would have said he’d known I would want to dress in private. I mean, I was sure the Doctor wasn’t the sort of man to “slip out in the night” as it were, disappearing and ignoring the intimacy of what we’d just done—twice—now that it was over, right? Still, the emptiness of the room was both a relief and—I tried to ignore this feeling—a tiny bit unsettling.

Glancing across the empty room, I noticed that the Doctor had made the bed and left my scattered clothing from the previous night in a neat pile on the end of it. I crossed the room to stand next to them, fingering my folded jeans thoughtfully. I needed to go back to my own room and find new clothes to wear, and I wondered if I should throw on yesterday’s outfit for the journey or just make the trip in my towel.

“Where is he?” I asked softly, and the TARDIS perked up in the back of my head, a mental idea of _Console_ flashing through my mind in response. “Right,” I replied, deciding that if the Doctor was fiddling about with the inner-workings of his ship I should have enough time to sneak back to my room and find something to wear.

I padded barefoot down the hall, my towel wrapped firmly around my body and my clothes clutched to my chest, feeling both nervous and giddy. When I reached the safety of my familiar bedroom I hurried inside and shut the door tightly, leaning against it with a sigh.

“Get it together, Rose,” I muttered to myself after a minute, forcing my body to move toward the dresser. “It’s just a day like any other day. Get dressed, go find something for breakfast, and quit overthinking things!”

But the thing was, it wasn’t really a regular day. Especially after last night.

And this morning.

And despite knowing that the Doctor was in love with me too, I was a tiny bit terrified to go into the Console room just now, which was ridiculous, but it didn’t stop me feeling that way.

I emerged into the hallway ten minutes later, dressed in jeans and a blouse, and a pair of cute ankle boots I’d brought into the TARDIS ages ago and completely forgotten about until now. I’d actually tried on about eight different outfits before deciding on this one, and the contents of my closet were now scattered across my bed and a large part of the floor, but I didn’t really think too much about it, I was too nervous.

The Doctor was still in the Console room; I realized that with our new Connection I could now sense where he was on some level. Of course, I could have called out to him with my mind, but I needed to see him first. When I entered the familiar room I found the Doctor standing at the console controls, his hands leaning against the panels but unmoving. He was wearing his regular brown pinstriped suit, his new “favorite” jacket having been reclaimed. I cleared my throat quietly as I entered and the Doctor turned around at once.

“Rose,” he said with an easy grin, his eyes roving quickly over my outfit then back up to my face before he turned back to whatever he’d been tinkering with.

“I thought you might be in here,” I said by way of greeting, my voice forcibly light as I moved up the ramp to stand next to him. “You were gone when I… I mean, after we… and it’s your room an’ all…”

The Doctor glanced at me when I reached the console and I ducked my head shyly, biting my lip as I eyed him through my hair.

“Yes, well, I thought you might… ahem… want some time to yourself or…” He swallowed, rubbing the back of his head and not quite meeting my eyes. “Or… something…”

 “Yeah I did, a little…” I murmured, as I gazed into his warm, brown eyes, trying to read the Doctor’s neutral expression.  “But now I just wanna be with you.”

We stood there for a minute, just looking at each other as the TARDIS hummed softly in the background, and I tried not to let the moment become awkward. Because the Doctor wasn’t saying anything now, he was just looking at me with such a searing intensity that I began to wonder if maybe my first analysis had been correct: he didn’t know how to act around me now that we’d—

 And then my stomach made a series of gurgling noises and I lurched backwards in horror. Next to me, the Doctor stood with his head cocked to one side, looking dazed and vaguely confused at what I was doing. After another second his brain seemed to catch up.

“Breakfast!” he announced loudly, striding past me to the opposite side of the console platform. “Most important meal of the day! Always good to replenish the stocks after vigorous—ahem, exercise and such.” Was it me, or had his pale cheeks tinted just a little at that? “Never let it be said that Chez TARDIS has let anyone starve, Rose Tyler. Come on then,” He turned back and, seeing me still standing in the same spot, reached for my hand and began propelling me across the platform at nearly a run. “I could use a nibble; what about you, Rose?”

“Famished…” I muttered weakly, and then felt a giggle bubble up my throat. I pulled my hand out of the Doctor’s and clapped it over my mouth in an effort to stifle my laughter, but my relief was so strong now that before long I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe—and the Doctor was staring at me like I was a new and slightly frightening type of alien life form.

“Er, Rose?” he asked after about fifteen seconds of helpless laughter.

I lifted my head, my arms clutching my stomach and my face pink with mirth, to look at him. “I—I’m s-sorry…” I choked out, trying to contain my hysterics. “It’s j-jus’ that… I thought it would be so d-different…”

The Doctor took two steps toward me, his brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”

I forced my body to take deep breaths until I was able to breathe like a normal person and not an escapee from a mental hospital. When I was in control of my voice once more I met the Doctor’s gaze, my face flushed from laughter and something else. “I mean,” I said more quietly, my amusement draining away at the look in his eyes, “that I sort of wondered if, you an’ me, if it would be different between us after we… I mean, because we…” I bit my lip, wondering why it was still so hard to say the words _made love_.

“You thought I’d treat you differently?” the Doctor asked, cottoning on at last. “Because we had sex.”

My face flamed at his bluntness. Apparently he had no trouble saying that word. “Maybe…” I muttered, not meeting his eyes now. “Some blokes are like that… forget about a girl once they’ve gotten what they wanted…”

“Rose…” And his hand was cupping my cheek again, like he always did, trying to get me to look at him. “Do you really think that I’m the sort of man who’d do that?”

I let him gently lift my chin, just starting to really feel guilty for even considering such a thing, when the Doctor’s eyes narrowed suddenly as he thought of something else.

“If you were so worried about that, why were you laughing at me just now?”

            “Because I realized how thick I was being,” I admitted, smiling sheepishly. “You’re exactly the same man you’ve always been. Being with me won’t change that.”

            The Doctor frowned down at me and my grin faltered. “That’s where you’re wrong, Rose Tyler,” he said slowly. “Being with you has changed everything about me.”

            “Doctor,” I started, but he cut me off determinedly.

            “I’ve become a better person since meeting you, Rose.” His thumb caressed the apple of my cheek absently as he continued. “You brought me back from the dark. Your presence in my mind is a constant reminder to strive to be a good man. Make no mistake, I’m still the quirky, slightly mad, man with a box that you met in that basement all those years ago, the only difference is now I finally have a companion who is truly equal to me on all levels. And I swear to you, physical intimacy is something that I don’t partake in lightly. Your allowing me that gift on every level my people demand is something I’d never demean as casual or unimportant. I _love_ you, Rose.”

I blinked up at him, my Doctor, my uneasiness quickly melting away as I stared at the calm happiness on the Doctor’s face. It was replaced by a sense of acceptance and safety and reassurance which wrapped around me like a cocoon. I didn’t know how to respond to such a declaration, but his face just now, that sweet, slightly hesitant, casting of the Doctor’s gaze while he smiled softly next to me, sent a warm feeling flooding through my body. I lifted my head so I was looking the Doctor right in the eye.

“Even if I like pears?” I queried innocently, a genuine smile breaking across my face now.

            The Doctor looked nonplussed at this response to his declaration for a moment, the intensity in his eyes almost palpable, but then his serious expression cracked and he wrinkled his nose at me. “No relationship is perfect,” he allowed magnanimously, and I giggled.

            “I promise never to eat them when you’re around,” I vowed. “But you’re on your own when we visit my mum.”

            The Doctor pulled back from me, a suspicious look in his eyes. “Why?”

            “Oh nothing much, just she might have gotten a cookbook called _1001 Ways to Presenting Perfect Pears_ for Christmas is all. Mickey really is thoughtful…”

            “And just when I was starting to like Ricky the Idiot again…” the Doctor muttered darkly, before he noticed the glint in my eye and the smirk on my lips. “Are you pulling my leg, Rose Tyler?”

            “Would I do that to you?” I replied innocently, my face blank and eyes wide. He silenced further comments with a swift and deep kiss, and soon pears were a long way from both our thoughts once more.

**~OOO~**

            We were cuddled on the small couch in the cozy sitting room after breakfast, watching the fire in the grate while the Doctor traced patterns on my arm with one long finger, when I spoke. “This won’t last, you know.”

            “Hmm?” The Doctor’s response vibrated against my cheek from where my head rested on his chest. “Time Lord, remember? I can make anything last forever. And then go back to the start and do it all over again.”

            “We can’t just stay in _here_ forever,” I amended. “We’ll have to go out there and fight the Acumen some time.”

            I could feel the Doctor’s body tense beneath me, though his finger continued its pattern on my skin. I could tell that, impossible though he knew it was, he’d been hoping I’d have forgotten about the Acumen, or at least the idea of joining him in going to fight it.

            “I’ve been thinking about that,” he admitted, his hand finally stilling on my arm, and he pushed himself into a sitting position, drawing me up with him but keeping me tucked close against his side as he rearranged his body. “And I may have a way.”

            I held my own body very still at this statement, knowing that it wasn’t made carelessly. The Doctor was just as terrified of the Acumen as I was, more so perhaps, though he hid it well. “Dangerous?” I asked, making my voice light with effort, not turning to look at him.

            “Decidedly so,” came the Doctor’s response, equally nonchalant.

            “Chance of survival?” I fired back, striving to maintain my casual tone.

            “Oh you know me, Rose; it’s no fun if there isn’t imminent danger and an 80% chance of someone losing a life or two.”

            Now I did sit up and turn to look him in the eyes. The Doctor’s flippant tone wasn’t what had tipped me off, his remark had been exactly what I’d been expecting, rather, it had been the slight tensing of his arms around me.

“Don’t do that,” I reproached him with a frown, and the Doctor’s arms fell from around me, the expression on his face turning grim. “Don’t hide things from me, Doctor. Not now. Not after—” I faltered slightly, then pinned him with my eyes in the dim lighting. “We’re a team, Doctor, you an’ me. Don’t lie to me. Please.”

            “We may escape, but I don’t know at what cost,” he said at last. “My idea is risky, but it’s all I’ve been able to come up with.” He levelled a look at me then, and I knew at once what he would say next. “Rose—”

            “I told you once I was gonna stay with you forever,” I returned softly, cutting him off before he could say it, before he could tell me to stay behind. I held his gaze determinedly, trying to show him that I wasn’t afraid. “You can’t ask me to run now; not after everything we’ve been through.”

            After an eternity he nodded, and I felt the Doctor’s fingers lace tightly through mine. I took a deep breath.

            “Just tell me what I need to do.”

**~OOO~**

The Doctor opened the TARDIS door cautiously and poked his head out. The hallway stretching out into the Acuite compound was empty but I could tell that this did nothing to alleviate the Doctor’s tension. Slowly he stepped out of the TARDIS and onto the tiled floor. I followed after, pulling the door shut behind me. The click of the latch sounded loud in the silence and I couldn’t help flinching a little, the Doctor didn’t even turn back. I peeked up at him and watched as his eyes scanned the corridor ahead and behind us before he reached his hand back for mine. I took a calming breath as the feeling of the Doctor’s warm fingers wrapped reassuringly around my cold hand, then stepped up beside him.

            “Allons-y?” I asked, keeping my voice low, and was rewarded with the tiniest of smiles from the man next me.

            “Oh yes, Rose Tyler. Allons-y!”

            The hall remained empty as we walked carefully forward, as did the corridor around the corner. By the time we reached the prison corridor with its rows of white rooms my heart had started to race with anxiety. I fought to keep a neutral expression on my face but the Doctor’s hand tightened around mine and he pulled us both to a stop at the head of the hall.

            “Are you alright, Rose?” he asked very seriously, peering down into my face as if he could see right into my head. And I guess he technically could, but was trying to be diplomatic about my emotions and let me be the one to share them with him. “There’s still time if you’d rather wait in the TARDIS. It’s perfectly safe inside; none of the Acuites can get in—”

            I shook my head quickly, blonde hair swinging into my eyes, and I shook it back as I squared my shoulders. “No, I can do this. It’s only… this hall and all…” I fluttered my hand vaguely at the rows of doors. “It’s where…” But I didn’t have to continue because the Doctor had realized where we were at the same time.

            “Oh…right. Well maybe we could—” And I could see him casting about for an alternate route and finding none.

            “I just wanna get out of here, Doctor,” I said firmly, taking a deep breath and striding forward again, towing him with along with me. “Let’s just get this over with.”

            Around the next corner the hall opened onto the cavernous main corridor off which the Sanctuary lay. There were two guards standing sentinel outside the doors just like the last time we’d been here, though I was relieved to see that neither of them was Ragalagh. The Doctor gave my hand a squeeze then released it, casting me one last look before he strode alone out into the middle of the hall.

            “Hello!” he called cheerily. “I believe you fellows may have been looking for me?”

            The guards reacted at once, and I watched from my place hidden around the corner as they spun to face the Doctor’s voice, drawing their swords as one. The Doctor seemed unfazed by the crackling red energy that run up and down the swords’ cold metal like a living thing, and instead moved closer with his hands held in the air as if in surrender.

            “Halt!” one of the guards shouted, springing forward to stop the Doctor from advancing. The Doctor did so, his expression open and unconcerned.

            “Secure the prisoner!” the other guard commanded, though I noticed that he looked slightly nervous as he made his way toward the Doctor, despite the fact that his enemy was unarmed.

Both Acuites moved closer and still the Doctor did nothing. I was beginning to feel a little concerned about the Doctor’s plan by the time the two guards were mere feet from him and he’d still not moved from his position. When they were almost upon him he spoke at last.

“I should warn you fellows that to come any closer to me right now would be inadvisable. I wish to speak with the Acumen, and, failing that, to the head of your guard. I’ve something of a bone to pick with him.”

The two Acuite soldiers exchanged glances. “You would offer yourself willingly to the Wise One?”

“Wellll…. I wouldn’t put it quite like that. Sounds a bit like I’m throwing myself at its feet as a sacrifice, doesn’t it?” the Doctor replied, and though his voice was casual, almost teasing, I could see the way his brown eyes narrowed, calculating every movement of the two Acuites before him. “What I _am_ offering, as you put it, is a chance for your Leader,” and I could hear the barely disguised disgust that twisted the word in the Doctor’s mouth as he spoke, “to let me and my friend go without further incident. As well as a chance for you to relocate to some place far from here where you won’t do any further damage.”

The second guard spoke this time. “The Wise One does not take orders.”

“Yeah, well, I think you’ll find that he may listen to me,” the Doctor said, lowering his hands and fixing the guards with a cold stare. “I can be pretty persuasive.”

I couldn’t see the look on the Doctor’s face from my vantage point around the corner now, as he’d turned to face down one of the soldiers, but I’d wager that it was very much the Oncoming Storm. The two guards were glancing between each other, apparently trying to convey without words whether or not they should let the Doctor enter the Sanctuary under his own power or not.

“Where is the blue capsule?” one guard asked at last, and I could feel the smirk on the Doctor’s lips even without seeing his expression.

“My TARDIS?” the Doctor clarified, rocking back on his heels with his hands in his trouser pockets, now the picture of ease.

“Yes!” snapped the other Acuite, narrowing his yellow eyes. “We have been unable to locate your ship, though our sources dictate it has not left the atmosphere. You will tell us where it is _now_ or face certain death!”

“As one might argue I face certain death anyway,” the Doctor replied jovially, “I think I’ll pass.”

_Doctor…_ I muttered mentally, trying to send him a warning to move things along. Right now we may only have two soldiers to deal with, but if he wasted any more time goading them we might run into trouble.

“Anyway,” the Doctor continued smoothly, “at the risk of sounding trite, take me to your leader!”

**~OOO~**

I could visualize the wink and broad grin that would have accompanied this command, but before I could laugh, or roll my eyes at his bravado, my thoughts were distracted by something else. Or rather, some _one_ else.

I didn’t even have time to scream. The hand that clamped onto my arm, nails digging into my flesh startled me, and I started to turn back to see who had snuck up behind me, but my movement was halted by my assailant’s other hand clapping over half my face and pinning my head back against his chest.

**~OOO~**

**Again, I’m so sorry for the insane wait for this chapter! It’s a little bit shorter than normal, but only because it was actually getting so long that I decided to cut it in half. Hopefully I can do the finale justice (it’s half written right now, and hopefully it’ll be up next week or two). If you don’t hate me for the long wait, maybe leave a little review telling me so? :)**


	23. Chapter 23

**I’m so sorry for the long wait (again!) for this chapter! At least it wasn’t as long as the last break. I didn’t even plan to be on hiatus that long the last time. Anyway, thanks to the few of you who are loyal enough to continue reading this fic despite everything. :) Perhaps you’ll give my future stuff a chance, too?**

**~OOO~**

-Chapter 23-

I didn’t even have time to scream. The hand that clamped onto my arm with nails digging into my flesh startled me, and I started to turn back to see who had snuck up behind me, but my movement was halted by my assailant’s other hand clapping over half my face and pinning my head back against his chest.

            “I’ve been waiting for you to reemerge, _human_ ,” came a deep and all too familiar voice. I felt my body lock up in shock as Ragalagh hissed into my ear. “Scuttling into holes like the vermin you are,” the Acuite General continued, his grip vice-like around my body. “Pretending that you are in control, that you are safe. You are foolish!”

            I couldn’t argue that point really, because I had been foolish; too distracted by the Doctor’s speech to the guards to be keeping a proper look-out from the vantage point where he had stationed me. I struggled in the General’s hold; he’d pinned my arms to my sides and heaved my body up so that my toes barely touched the floor. The position was precarious and awkward, and gave me next to no leverage, so I did the only thing left to me: I bit the hand over my mouth. Hard.

            The General let out a roar and yanked his hand away from my face, flinging my body away from his. “You will regret that, human!”

            I stumbled back from Ragalagh with a shriek, casting wildly about for something with which to hit him, or even a place I could wedge myself where he couldn’t follow. The hallway was bare aside from the rows of prison doors behind us—a place I would rather die than be forced to return to—and so I took my only other option and lurched toward the main cavern, just as Ragalagh lunged forward and grabbed for me.

            The two guards had apparently been in the process of lowering their swords before their General and I had begun shouting just out of view, and they yanked them back into the air when I burst into the room, followed hotly by their commander.

            “Seize him!” Ragalagh shouted upon seeing the Doctor, at the same time which I cried “Doctor! Run!” The Doctor spun around at my voice, his eyes wide and his face draining of colour as Ragalagh caught up to me a second time and yanked me backward as I screamed.

            “Rose!” he shouted, and I could see fear mixed with the anger in his eyes. “Let her go!”

            Ragalagh had drawn his sword in the chaos and now had me pinned to his side with one beefy arm, his energy-riddled weapon only inches from my throat. The two Sanctuary guards had grabbed the Doctor’s arms while he’d been distracted and were now struggling to hold him still as he thrashed in their grip.

            “I don’t think so,” Ragalagh said lowly, tightening his grip around my ribs just enough to elicit a squeak of pain from me. “This human has caused me no end of trouble. Not to mention you, Doctor. It is time we end this.”

            “Rose, are you alright?” the Doctor called, ignoring Ragalagh’s threat.

            “I’m fine, Doctor,” I called back, eyes transfixed on the sizzling red energy flickering up and down the General’s sword. “I couldn’t let you have all the fun, yeah?”

The grin the Doctor started to flash me at this fizzled out when Ragalagh’s fingers dug into my arm to silence me. I tried to bite back any sound of distress, knowing it would only agitate the Doctor, but a small cry of pain slipped past my lips anyway and I could see the Doctor’s eyes tighten and his expression cloud over.

“Listen,” he bit out, glaring at the General and straining against his captors’ hands, his arms now pinned behind his back. “I was trying to go about this diplomatically, despite the fact that you’ve done everything not to deserve it, but you’re on very thin ice now.”

            I could feel the tension in Ragalagh’s body as the Doctor spoke coiling tighter and tighter, and I prayed he wouldn’t do something drastic before the Doctor could talk our way out of this mess.

            “Silence!” Ragalagh roared. “You are in no position to be making threats, Time Lord!” He began to make his way toward the Sanctuary once more, dragging me along with him.

            “I think you’ll find that a wild animal backed into a corner is far more dangerous than one who you’ve met on a fair field,” the Doctor snapped back.  

Ragalagh let out a low sound that might have been a laugh, or a growl of annoyance. “Perhaps you’d be more cowed if I disposed of your mate?” he suggested, flickering a glance between me and the Doctor, his lips twisting in a mockery of a smile. The Doctor’s expression tightened.

            “Doctor, now’d be a really good time to have a plan, yeah?” I called nervously, trying to keep my throat from being fried by Ragalagh’s sword while at the same time trying to figure out a way to avoid going back into the Sanctuary. “We’ve been in worse scrapes; it’s not like this is anything to be worried about, right?” I’d been trying for teasing, hoping that if I could make my voice light enough I’d stop feeling so utterly sick to my stomach.

            “Ha!” came the Doctor’s voice from somewhere behind me as Ragalagh did something out of my line of sight and the doors to the Sanctuary creaked open ahead of us, yawning darkness. “Worried? Me? Never!”

            I closed my eyes and a wave of nauseasness rolled over me as Ragalagh propelled me over the threshold. “Good, because I have to admit that I kind of am… a bit...” I muttered, and then I had to stop talking because Ragalagh hadn’t waited for me to get my bearings upon entering the Sanctuary, instead he’d continued dragging forward at such a brisk pace that I had to stumble along almost had to run to keep up.

            In all too short a time the flickering blue light of the Acumen loomed up before us and Ragalagh finally stopped. I was about to call behind us to the Doctor, to make sure he was alright, when the General flung me forward with enough force that I overbalanced and sprawled on the hard ground with a cry.

            “Rose!” came the Doctor’s shout from the shadows beyond, though he and his guards were still too far back for me to see them in the gloom with my weaker human eyesight. I knew that I was easy for them to see, however, as my body was backlit by the brightly glowing smoke twisting in the air on the alter behind me, twin images of which burned in the reflections of Ragalagh’s eyes.

            “Doctor—” I began, but the rest of my words were choked off when a sudden sensation rushed over me. It felt as if my entire body was abruptly awash in pins and needles. Without my consent my hands pushed my body up onto my knees, then my legs bent and rose to a standing position. It was as if something else was in control of my limbs, a puppet master pulling strings. Inside my head I started screaming, shouting for the Doctor to do something, anything, with every fiber of my being… but it was as if my mental voice hit a wall as firm and impenetrable as any physical one.

            In front of me, Ragalagh’s lips pulled back in a smile as terrifying as a shark’s and he turned to face the Doctor who’d finally been wrestled across the room to stand next to him.

            “What have you done to her?” the Doctor demanded at once, barely able to pull his eyes away from me long enough to glare menacingly at the General.

            “You may as well settle down, Time Lord,” Ragalagh said coolly, looking unruffled at the Doctor’s anger. “The Acumen is in control of your… ‘friend’ did you call her?” He paused for a fraction of a moment before his grin darkened. “This human is much more than simply a companion to you… isn’t she?”  He paused again, and this time the Doctor flinched back, though I could see from behind the windows that were now my eyes, that he was fighting madly to hide that fact.

            “Stay out of my head,” the Doctor growled, and Ragalagh smirked at him.

            “Now, now, don’t be coy, Doctor. The human female does have a sort of interesting quality about her.” He reached out then and traced the nail of one finger down my cheek in a move so intimate that it would have sent a shiver rocking through me if I’d been able to react at all. He continued then, obviously relishing the murderous glare on the Doctor’s face. “So innocent, this human, so willing to believe in the unshakable power of her Time Lord _lover_ … I’ll tell you a secret, Doctor; I enjoyed the privilege of plundering your companion’s mind once before; I will relish it even more doing it again, and making you _watch_!”  

He reached out his hands to toward me…

            The Doctor spat something at the General then that I was eighty percent sure was Gallifreyan and one hundred percent sure wasn’t polite, and threw his body forward with a growl, fighting viciously to break free of the soldiers’ restraining hands.

            Ragalagh laughed coldly, retracting his hands. “Temper, temper…” he chided, shaking his head at the Doctor like a disappointed parent. He moved closer to the Doctor then, and eyed him cruelly. “Don’t you think your energies would be better spent on other pursuits at this time? I am truly impressed that you’ve managed to hold out this long, really…”

            I frowned at these words, or would have if I’d been in command of my lips. What was Ragalagh talking about?

            “ _We are impressed with your strength, Time Lord_.”

            I flinched inwardly in shock. That had been _my_ voice, though the words carried an eerie double echo as they floated out into the cavernous Sanctuary, and yet it hadn’t been _me_ who had thought to put those words into being, even as they passed my own lips.

            The Doctor’s head snapped around at my voice, his eyes round with shock. “Rose?”

            “ _We are not Rose Tyler. We are the Great Consciousness. The All-Knowing-One. We use the human female as a vessel only.”_

            Ragalagh spun at this announcement. “Wise One, why have you chosen the human to speak through? Their race is weak. Why not I—?”

            The voice that was not mine interrupted the Acuite General coldly. “ _The human female was able to break the bond you placed on her. She is strong. You are not fit to serve in this honor any longer_.”

            Somewhere, in the tiny space in the back of my mind where my consciousness was now crowded, I almost laughed at the livid expression that crossed Ragalagh’s face at this shaming. _Ha!_ I wanted to shout at him. _See? I_ am _stronger than you in the end!_ But my amusement was short lived as the Acumen spoke through my mouth again.

“ _Doctor, you will submit your mind to Us. We desire to feed on your centuries of learning_.” The Acumen manipulated my arms, raising my hands so that I reached out as if I were about to grip the Doctor’s head between my palms.

            I watched as the Doctor gave his head a shake as if to clear it, then narrowed his eyes at me. I knew in that moment that it wasn’t _me_ that he saw then, that he was talking to; the Doctor looked right through me, focusing on the undulating blue smoke wafting around my body.

            “Submit?” he half-shouted, managing to look both incredulous and outraged. “ _Submit_?! You, speaking in the Royal ‘We’ and demanding other beings offer their memories as tithes simply for crossing you? You’re nothing more than bodiless smoke, nowhere near fit to be making demands! Now release Rose before you make me really angry.”

            “ _You may resist, Time Lord,_ ” the Acumen continued, lowering my arms, _“but We are ageless. We do not feel the passing of time. We can wait.”_ The Acumen paused for a moment to let its words sink in, then continued in the same bland, unemotional tone. “ _We have grounded your transport and taken your Companion. We have seen that you care for the human female. We respect her strength; she has managed to retrieve her memories from Us and We are curious how this was accomplished. But if she is what is holding you back, We will not hesitant to dispose of her and find another vessel.”_

The action that followed these words was immediate. A blinding pain pierced through my body and the pins and needles sensation intensified. My voice was abruptly my own again, just in time for the scream that had been building in my chest since the Acumen had first taken possession of me to burst free and echo off the stone walls. Blue light blazed up around me, enveloping me in a crackling column of energy, the sound in my ears a torrent like a rushing wind. All at once the inferno ended and I felt my body fall forward onto the ground, limp as a ragdoll. I sprawled on the floor only feet from where the Doctor stood, and lay there, unable to move.  

I felt _apart_ from my body, almost as if I were drifting above it. I wanted to call to the Doctor that I wasn’t dead, that I only felt as if I’d survived a tornado, but I could do nothing more than lay on the cold stone floor, barely breathing. My hair had been flung across my face, obscuring my view of the Doctor, and his of me, but I was still able to make out his eyes, and the change that came over him as my body rolled to a stop at his feet.

Ragalagh stepped forward with a jerk, his yellow eyes now blazing blue.

If the Acumen had thought to break the Doctor’s spirit by hurting, or, for all the Doctor knew right now, _killing_ me, it was sadly mistaken. Threaten _him_ , fine, he’d faced worse in his many lifetimes, but threaten someone he cared about, well, that was another story entirely. The look that came over the Doctor’s face at the Acumen’s words very nearly made me physically flinch—despite still having no control over my body. The look in his eyes was every inch the Oncoming Storm, and I noticed even Ragalagh took an unwilling step back at the sight of him.

            The Doctor ducked his head down, almost as if he were going to surrender, as if he had nothing left to fight for now that I lay possibly dead at his feet. But then he spoke, and his voice, though quiet at first, grew louder and angrier with every sentence that passed his lips. 

            “You’ve just made a mistake _so colossal_ it would take five generations of evolution for your species to even _begin_ to comprehend the gravity of it.” He raised his head and the cold fury burning in the Doctor’s eyes was terrifying. “Since your race is apparently far too stupid to have realized this beforehand, for all your claimed knowledge of Time Lords, let me spell it out for you. You’ve taken something of mine; something that probably seems insignificant and worthless to you, here on this godforsaken rock in the middle of deep space, surrounded by the nothingness of light-years, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Because what you’ve taken is precious to me; and you’ve _broken_ her.”

            The two Acuite guards holding the Doctor’s arms looked very nervous now. One of them even started to step back, loosening his hold. The Doctor didn’t even seem to notice, just continued on speaking in a slow deep voice, barely keeping his anger in check.

            “If she’s hurt, may your gods protect you; but if she’s _dead_ ,” And now the Doctor’s voice rose to an absolute roar of rage as he lurched free of the slackening grip of his guards, yanking the sonic screwdriver out of his jacket as he went. “If she’s dead, I won’t forgive you! If you’ve killed Rose and left her defiled corpse in this abomination of a temple just to get to me… _no power in the universe will save you from me now!_ ”

            I struggled to move even one finger, but some force was pinning me to the ground, I couldn’t even blink my eyes. It was then that I realized that the Acumen hadn’t really set me free. Though it was possessing Ragalagh to speak to the Doctor, some part of it was still inside my head, an invisible tendril weaving itself through my consciousness and preventing me from making contact with the one man who could destroy us all if pushed too far.

             “ _She was but a vessel_ ,” came the now much deeper, yet similarly eerie, echoing voice of the Acumen through Ragalagh’s mouth. “ _We are not concerned with the life and death of lesser beings._ ”

            Ragalagh lurched forward like a robot whose joints needed oil, and stretched out his hands as if he might crush the Doctor’s skull between them. The Doctor sidestepped the General and spun on the two guards standing only steps from him, jabbing the sonic at them and pressing a button on the side. The screwdriver flared blue and shock waves flashed invisibly through the air, sending both soldiers stumbling back with shouts of pain moments before they crumpled to the Sanctuary floor, unconscious. 

            “Newsflash,” the Doctor spat out, advancing on Ragalagh with the sonic brandished in front of him. “At this point, neither am I!”

            Ragalagh faced off with the Doctor with an unnatural calmness, his eyes flaring electric blue and the smoke from the Acumen rising around him. “ _You are brave, Time Lord,_ ” came the Acumen’s voice. “ _We praise your valor. We will learn from your emotions and experiences as We have learned from the human’s.”_

            If possible, the Doctor’s expression became even more rigid. “Valor has nothing to do with it,” he bit out, his voice strained, and I noticed that despite his efforts to remain stoic, the Doctor’s righteous anger wasn’t enough to keep him from stumbling back at Ragalagh’s advance. “And she’s not just a human,” he added, his dark eyes flashing. “Her name is Rose Tyler and she was a far better person than I could ever hope to be. And in case that wasn’t enough for you to understand why you should be very, very afraid right now, let me make me one more thing abundantly clear.” The Doctor’s eyes locked on Ragalagh’s with a deadly calm. “If she’s dead I have nothing left to live for. And a man with nothing left to lose is very dangerous indeed…”

“ _The human girl does not matter,_ ” Ragalagh repeated, advancing on the Doctor, who stumbled back another step, bringing his feet within inches of my statue-still body. “ _And your threats mean nothing, Doctor. We have learned from… Rose Tyler…_ ” the echoing voice said my name as if it were a foreign word, and then moved smoothly on, “… _that your weakness is your capacity to love the race called human kind, and that you have fought an internal battle of self-hatred for hundreds of years over destroying your own people. You are a warrior, a solider, a man bathed in blood and battle. Are you not tired, Time Lord? Is it not time to pass the burden on to someone else?_ ”

The Doctor’s fingers were now curled into fists at his sides, his knuckles white as he gripped the sonic screwdriver in one hand. His body was leaning forward as if fighting an invisible gale-force wind, and his normally warm, brown eyes were narrowed in anger.

“And what would you propose to do with my memories of all those I’ve lost?” the Doctor asked in a quiet voice, hard as steel. “Don’t you dare insult me with the idea that you’d be doing me a kindness!”

Ragalagh took another step closer. “ _We would learn from your past, Time Lord; from your future experiences too. We only desire to seek knowledge. Let go, Doctor. Be free of this mortal coil_.”

The Doctor struggled for his regular carefree smirk, his teeth clenching as he fought to continue speaking normally. “’Man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant: all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed’. Good ol’ Marcus Aurelius, the man really was wise beyond his years.”

Ragalagh, though he did not blink or frown, or show any emotion really, came to a standstill a few feet from the Doctor, an aura of confusion hovering around his body. “ _We do not believe that the words of_ _a human emperor, erudite or not, apply to one such as yourself,_ Time Lord _. Why do you now speak of him?”_

“Because a man’s experiences are what shape him as a being; and no matter how much pain and heartache may come with my past, you could never convince me to willingly give those memories up. My past is unchangeable, fixed points and all that, but the affect it’s had on my present state isn’t something I’d surrender. Oh, the temptation is there, one doesn’t rise to this level of power and knowledge without breaking a few rules and making more than a few wrong decisions,” he added, pinning Ragalagh with a self-deprecating look. “Of course it is. Who wouldn’t want to be free of the hurt they’ve suffered through? But it is the strongest among us who know that the knowledge of our life experiences create spirit and growth. To take those away would be to drive out ambition, imagination and emotion. In short, you may have seen into my soul and rightly deduced that I despise myself for my past mistakes, but I would never give them up, because they have made me who I am today. And as for Marcus, he was, as you said, a brilliant man. And an extremely gracious host when one shows up out of the blue and needs a villa on no notice.”

The Doctor, to my utter surprise, had started to grin by the end of this impassioned speech, and I wondered briefly if he had cracked from the pressure of the Acumen and simply hadn’t realized it yet.

“ _We do not understand_.”

“Ahh, but don’t you?” The Doctor’s grin had grown to full-on glee now, as if he’d suddenly figured out the key to a mystery. “You did, after all remind me of something important.”

“ _And what is that, Doctor?_ ”

“Marcus, in being a great man, reminded me just now of a great woman.”

And then, instead of elaborating, the Doctor did something that no one could have expected: he stopped fighting back. Though my face was still obscured by my hair, I was still able to see the surprise in Ragalagh’s eyes when the Doctor changed directions and, instead of straining away from the Acuite soldier’s advance, threw his body _forward_ , hands outstretched to clamp around either side of Ragalagh’s own head!

Ragalagh responded automatically, his own hands shooting up to clutch at the Doctor’s head, his blue eyes blazing brighter at the contact. Their faces were only inches apart now, both men glaring into each other’s eyes as their hands pressed hard against their enemy’s skulls, and Ragalagh laughed harshly.

“This woman must not have been very wise, Doctor, for the mere thought of her sent you leaping toward your death with open arms.”

The Doctor’s answering grin was slightly maniacal. “Not even close. She was one of the most _brilliant_ women I ever had the pleasure of knowing. Would you like to know what she said to me?”

Ragalagh grunted, straining to hold the Doctor still, and the Doctor leaned in even closer, his eyes burning into Ragalagh’s. “She told me: ‘a door once opened can be stepped through in either direction.’”

It only took Ragalagh seconds to process what the Doctor had said before a look of surprise came over his face. “No—” he started to say, but the Doctor cut him off, closing his eyes and pressing his fingers harder against the Acuite’s temples.

“OH, YES!”

And then the world went black.

**~OOO~**

            I struggled to open my eyes, sitting up slowly and feeling confused. The world felt off, as if I should be remembering something important that was hovering just out of reach. The air around me felt electric, and when I glanced down at my arms I saw that the fine hairs on them were standing on end. With a little shiver I pushed to my feet, rubbing my arms to work some heat back into them as I took in my surroundings.

            I was standing in the Sanctuary. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. The cavernous room was sort of _flickering_ around me, one second reflecting the enormous stone temple, dimly lit from an unseen source, the next, shimmering into a long corridor lined with white doors… then an open field… then a back street behind a familiar apartment complex that looked almost like—

            “Rose?”

            The voice behind me was tangle of emotions fighting for normality, shock and hope vying for top billing. I turned slowly as the scene around me faded from the building I was almost certain had been the flat where mum lived and morphed into the Sanctuary once more. The Doctor stood behind me, about ten feet away, looking as if he was struggling not to let himself believe what he was seeing.

            “Doctor?” I whispered, taking half a step toward him. Then recent memories caught up with me and I spun back around, looking wildly about the room for Ragalagh. “Wait, where’s—?!”

            The room was empty aside from the Doctor and I turned quickly back to face him, half afraid he would have vanished in the seconds I had turned my back. He was watching me carefully, his face having smoothed out as he reigned his feelings back in, and now he took another step closer.

            “Rose…. are you alright?”

            I glanced down at myself, giving my body a little shake. I felt fine. In fact, I felt better than fine, now that I could move my limbs under my own control again. “I think so. You?”

            I started to move toward the Doctor and the air around us shimmered again, this time fading into a halfway translucent replica of the TARDIS console interior. The Doctor’s sharp eyes took this in as I drew nearer, but he said nothing and instead pulled me into a tight, if hesitant, hug. Though I wanted nothing more than to hold him, reassuring myself that the Doctor was real and solid in this constantly changing environment, I pulled back after several long seconds and looked up at him.

            “What happened?”

            The Doctor didn’t answer at first, just stared down at me with an unreadable look in his eyes, searching my face.

            “Doctor, why’re you lookin’ at me like that?”

            “I thought you were dead.”

            I blinked up at him, taking in for the first time the fullness of the pain in his eyes. I had never seen the Doctor cry; not when describing his past sins to me, not when talking about all those he’d lost on Gallifrey, not even when he’d found me in the white room… but now I could have almost sworn his eyes glinted with something wet. He continued on in the same low voice.

            “When the Acumen possessed you and warned me that my affection for you was something easily bypassed by destroying the vessel of your body…” His arms around me trembled faintly and I reached up to place a hand against his cheek as the Doctor continued on, unable to help himself. “The sound you made when it released you, Rose… I’ve never heard anything that horrifying. And I couldn’t speak to you. I tried to reach your mind but there was nothing there. And on Gallifrey there’s only one reason a bonded pair can’t communicate after the Binding Ceremony.”

            I reached up my other hand to take his face between my palms. The Doctor’s brown eyes looked lifeless and dull. “But I’m not, Doctor. See?” I stretched up on my toes so my face was closer to his, and smiled slightly. “The Acumen must have done something, yeah? Messed with your head. An’ mine. After it released me I couldn’t move, there was this sort of… weight… pressing down on me, both mentally and physically. I could see you but I couldn’t respond. I tried to reach out to you, too, you know, after I realized I couldn’t talk and all, but there was something holding me back. I think maybe the Acumen hadn’t really let me go, at least not all the way. But there was no way for me to tell you. Anyway, I’m fine now; see?” There was no way I was going to elaborate on the excruciating pain that that ripped through my head when Acumen had wrenched the majority of its consciousness from my mind, the Doctor had suffered enough on that count already.

            **Rose?**

            The word in my mind was so unsure, so wary, that I could barely meet the Doctor’s gaze at the sound of it. My name was a test, a last chance for him to see if my presence here wasn’t just a horrible vision created by the Acumen to pull at his mental resistance. I could see how tense the Doctor was and knew that if I didn’t respond he might very well shatter from the heartbreak.

            Please work, I prayed silently. Please, please, please….

            _I’m here._

            The Doctor’s hands clenched slightly around me and I knew that he’d heard me.

_I’m here and I’m real and I’m ok._

            The look that came over the Doctor’s face was surprise and relief and joy. And then he was kissing me, bowing my body against his, dipping me backwards in his eagerness as his lips crashed against mine in a desperate wave of emotion. I clutched at the Doctor’s head with my own hands, trying to keep my balance as he pulled my body tighter, meeting him kiss for desperate kiss, each taste of his lips and tongue driving my need. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been afraid that _this_ _time_ we’d finally landed in over our heads. _This time_ we’d finally met an enemy the Doctor wasn’t a match for. Which reminded me, we weren’t out of the woods yet.

            We finally broke apart, breathing hard, and stared at each other for a long moment until the flickering scenery around us caught my attention again. The background flicked from the TARDIS console room to an outdoor setting of waving red grass and silver trees, then to the apartment complex again, then back to the TARDIS—this time the Doctor’s bedroom—then to…

            “You need to get your emotions under control, Rose,” the Doctor said quietly but with a small edge to his voice, startling me back into looking at him again. He had a slight smile on his face as he pulled back from where he’d been pressed up against me.

            “W-what?” I managed, still a little out of breath. The bedroom faded away and the Sanctuary flickered back into view around us, the edges of the room blurring, as if the scene wasn’t quite solid.

            “I suppose you’ve noticed the changing scenery?” the Doctor said, patting down his suit until he located the sonic screwdriver tucked into an interior pocket. He pulled it out with a broadening grin of relief, and when he clicked it the top flared blue. He buzzed the sonic briefly across a stretch of air near us, then clicked it again and whipped it with a flourish up to his eye-level to inspect. Satisfied at whatever he read, he replaced the sonic in his jacket and looked to me again.

            “Um, yeah. I was wondering why it was all, as you might say, wibbly?” I offered a smile which the Doctor returned, before glancing at the wavering scenery again.

            “Look familiar, does it?” he asked casually. “Places you’ve been before?”

            I glanced around and the Sanctuary changed into the white hallway, then my living room in the flat in London, before fading back into the Sanctuary again. “Now you mention it, yeah. Why, you see something different?”

            “Nope, same as you. Only you’re the one controlling the movie, as it were.” He gave me a tiny grin.

            “Why me, what did _I_ do?” I asked quickly, feeling a buzz of panic jitter through me, and the air around us morphed back into the TARDIS console room. “Why not you?”

            “Oh I could do it, too,” the Doctor amended, “but I’m working rather hard not to. Which, incidentally, you should probably be trying to do, too.”

            “Doctor, now is so not the time for talking in circles! Explain.” I replied warningly, and the air faded into the TARDIS library. I glanced around at the ghostly shelves of books. “Right, I say ‘explain’ and I get Time Lord books. I suppose all the answers are in there somewhere…”

            Something warm brushed my fingers and I looked down to see that the Doctor had slipped his hand into mine. “No riddles, Rose, just the honest truth. Where we are right now, our minds are on a fragile plane, very open to the processes of other mental consciousnesses in the vicinity.”

            “And where, exactly, would that be?” I asked, feeling a growing sense of trepidation as the air flickered back into the Acumen’s Sanctuary once more. The Doctor gave my hand a reassuring squeeze.

            “Welllll….I can’t be precisely sure, but my aim before was to turn the tables and take the fight to the enemy as it were… see which one of us really does have the biggest brain.” He grinned and tapped his head with his free hand. I rolled my eyes at his antics, but couldn’t help the smile that they enticed. Still, as I tried to process this convoluted response, the Doctor’s words to Ragalagh floated back to my mind.  

“Does this have something to do with going through the door from either side or wha’ever?”

            The Doctor grinned and bent down to kiss my forehead. “Everything to do with that, Rose Tyler!”

            I grinned back at him, pleased, then frowned, my feeling at having made some sort of correct connection having been replaced with the fact that I still had no idea what the Doctor was talking about. “So what you’re sayin’ is….?”

            “What I’m saying is the Acumen digs into a creature’s brain and drains their mental processes, syphoning away their memories for dinner. The stronger it is the more control it has over its victim. Because you’re human and psychically inferior to most mentally based species—ouch! You know it’s true, Rose—” The Doctor shot me an aggrieved look at the elbow I’d given his side before continuing on. “—you were easy enough to manipulate—that is attack, as happened earlier, or possess, as happened recently—but I had the idea that coming from a race as psychically strong as Time Lords are, it might be possible to shove back.”

            “And in words simple enough for us psychically inferior people?” I interrupted wryly. The Doctor gave me a grim smile.

            “In simple words, Rose, I attempted to force _my_ consciousness onto the Acumen’s. Jump into _its_ mind, if you will.”

            I looked around the room with a renewed eye. “Wasn’t that what it wanted you to do in the first place?”

            “No,” the Doctor said at once. “If I had given in to the Acumen’s mental attack I wouldn’t be able to control my own thoughts here. I’d be a body on the floor next to yours right now. The reason I was able to make the leap is for the same reason ingesting a Time Lord Consciousness is a five-course-meal for a being like the Acumen: my mind and body are in a constant state of flux. With all the paths I could have taken, I chose the one least expected, and by doing so I slipped through the cracks into the back of the Acumen’s ‘mind’, for lack of a better, more encompassing, term.”

            “And the reason I’m here?” I pressed, still trying to follow the Doctor’s logic and eventually just accepting it, regardless of not fully understanding it all.

            “Yes, well that was unexpected,” he admitted, looking down at me as we continued to walk across the Sanctuary, having, apparently started heading for the doors. “Your consciousness was probably pulled along because I was thinking of you so hard at the time, and, obviously, because the Acumen hadn’t fully released your mind at the moment I made the leap.”

            I nodded. “Right then, _now_ can you tell me what’s going on with the changing scenery?”

            “We’ve essentially jumped into the heart of the Acumen’s mind,” the Doctor began, and I nodded. “Imagine if you will, a lake, and we’re two raindrops that have landed in the middle of the water. We’re technically separate from the rest of the lake, but at the same time we’re completely connected. We’ve been absorbed into the water as a whole.”

            I nodded again, still not quite getting where he was going with this whole analogy, especially considering the Doctor was rather famous for his “It’s like this… only it’s actually not like this at all…” explanations.

            “In short, our minds are all connected now, thus the movie setting scenery—it’s changing based on your subconscious thoughts.  But the important part of our fused mental processes right now, is the understanding that now, the second you think of something, the Acumen will know it, too. Basically, Rose, now is the time to work on being very, very careful of letting thoughts form fully in your head. Do you understand?”

            I stared at the Doctor. “You’re sayin’ that our greatest enemy knows all our secrets now? How was this a good plan, Doctor? I mean, you _did_ have a plan before you hurled yourself merrily—not to mention _willingly_ —out of the pan and into the hellfire, right?”

            The Doctor grinned roguishly. “Of course I did; I’m clever. And if ever there was a time and place for me to out-clever myself, now and here would be it!”

            I pinned him with a look. “So you _do_ have a plan?”

            The Doctor’s response was a wink and I almost hit him with frustration. He responded with a halfway-realized laugh and I stared up at him. Finally he took pity on me and gave me an actual answer. Well, almost.

            “Rose, if anyone should know what we have to do now to leave this place on the winning team, it’s you. I can’t tell you want we need to do specifically because—”

            “—As soon as you give thought to your plan the Acumen will know it, too.” I summarized, feeling frustrated with the Doctor’s coyness, despite knowing its vitality.

            The Doctor nodded, then met my eyes with a serious look. “But Rose, you _do_ know what we need to do. You’ve done it before. Think back, though not too far,” he warned, his eyes boring into mine now, as if he could force the memory to swim to the surface if only he looked hard enough. “Remember, Rose. Remember what you had to do the last time you fought against unimaginable odds. Find the _connection_ ; but as soon as you do, you need to act on it, no hesitating. Do you understand, Rose?”

            I stared at him. The Doctor had obviously been trying to send me a message without coming right out and telling me what I needed to remember. I considered his words. There had been something about the way he’d stressed the word “connection” that was nagging at the back of my mind. Connection? Did he mean our bond? No, that would be compromised right now, too. What else could he have meant?

            I pondered hard for several long seconds, my heart racing in my chest as I fought to remember what the Doctor was talking about, while at the same time, being afraid of giving thought to the memory because of the Doctor’s earlier warning of the Acumen knowing what we knew as soon as we thought of it. As I concentrated, the Doctor continued to hold my hands in his, his fingers a warm and reassuring pressure as my mind worked furiously to unravel his cryptic clues.

            And then, suddenly, the answer hit me. It was both startlingly obvious and terrifying. For the briefest of seconds my mouth popped open and my eyes flashed up to meet the Doctor’s. He gave me a tiny nod, reaffirming that he had been thinking the same thing that had just come to me, and then I took a deep breath and squeezed his hands back with all the strength I possessed.

            “Here goes nothing…” 

**~OOO~**

**And again I apologize for making you wait so long. This was going to be the final chapter… and then it wasn’t… again. The next one probably will be. Maybe. Lol. I wonder if anyone else can guess what the Doctor and Rose need to do to win this fight? ;)**


	24. Chapter 24 (END)

***tumbleweed blows past* Anyone still out there? I know it’s been months, but here it is, my Christmas present to you all: the Final Chapter!**

**~OOO~**

-Chapter 24-

At first all I felt was the returning pressure of the Doctor’s hands as he squeezed my fingers back, but soon that sensation was replaced with a new feeling. This feeling was something that I had only felt once before, when I had been so utterly desperate that I’d been willing to do absolutely anything in order to make it go away. And then the sensation of the Doctor’s hands faded away and I jerked my eyes open in surprise.

The world around me no longer show-cased the stone walls of the Acumen’s Sanctuary, instead everything, from the room to the very air, had transformed into a shimmering, pulsating, golden light. I couldn’t make out anything solid; it was if I’d stumbled into a hurricane of glitter. Quickly, I looked down at my hands, needing the solid connection of the Doctor’s fingers wrapped around my own to reassure me that I wasn’t alone in this, and a wave of abrupt and encompassing panic rippled over me when discovered that I could no longer see him.

“Doctor?!” His name tore out of my throat in a tremulous half-whisper half-cry, immediately swallowed up by the vortex of light swirling around me, and I spun in a quick circle, straining to see through the luminous air. There was nothing, not even a shadow or a silhouette, to indicate the presence of another body nearby.

Swallowing back the instinct to call out again, I tried to calm myself down. After all, this was part of my plan. Well, sort of. When the Doctor had reminded me of the last time I’d done this I’d been shocked. Because the first time I’d connected to the heart of the TARDIS I’d nearly burned my mind and soul, and it had cost him one of his lives. The second time he’d been aware of what I was doing, but was still adamantly against the risk, never mind the change in the balance—me having so much less of the vortex within me that time, him fighting to hold on this body because he knew how I felt about it…both of us caught in a web of desperation. But this time, he must have known that we were both dead without chance of reprieve if we didn’t try _something_ , and so the risk was justified no matter the cost.

But something felt different this time. It wasn’t just threads of golden memory teasing at my consciousness this go around. It was as if the entire world had been absorbed by the combination of the vortex and my connection to it through the TARDIS, and the very atmosphere around me now seemed to pulse to the heartbeat of the universe.

And then a whisper brushed past the back of my neck.

It was barely a murmur, so soft that I was only aware of the sensation of words because of the way the air shifted against my skin. The words themselves were swallowed up by the glittering storm raging around me, both a roar of sound and silent at the same time. The whisper came again, and this time it was accompanied by a tendril of blue smoke drifting out of the light and curling around my ankles before being sucked away again.

“ _Knowledge_ …”

The bodiless Voice sent a chill through me. Despite being unable to see anyone beyond my own physical form, I knew the Voice at once as the hungry, greedy, hiss emitted by the Acumen, and this horrifying realization sent me twisting in a dizzying circle, straining to see through the tornado of light but unable locate it.

“ _Yessss…. We are pleased with thisss_ …” the Voice wheezed again, the eerie double echo seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. I twisted again, turning awkwardly just in time to see two more tendrils of blue smoke break through the light and wind their way up my legs teasingly before unravelling and blowing away once more.

The Acumen was here. Oh god. It was here and I’d just cracked the seal on the biggest feast of its existence. What if I’d been wrong? What if the Doctor hadn’t meant for me to tap back into the Time Vortex one last time and I’d just handed his greatest enemy the key to ultimate power?!

The air around me felt pleasantly warm despite the chill seeping through my veins, and I tried to reign my emotions back in and focus. Something was telling me that the Acumen wasn’t yet strong enough to come fully through despite what I’d done. But who knew how long it would take for that to change? The air had started to heat during the seconds it had taken me to make this observation, and the beginnings of a headache were starting to grow behind my eyes.

            Something nudged at the back of my mind then, and I nearly cried out with joy.

            “ _Doctor_?” I thought quickly, turning this way and that, as if he would materialize out of the golden maelstrom any second. “ _Where are you? Tell me what to do next_!”

            But the only sound was the rushing wind around me, the only feeling the steadily increasing heat. My skin started to prickle like the beginning of a sunburn, and my headache throbbed, causing me to clutch reflexively at my skull. Then the nudge came again, dim, but persistent, and finally I realized what it was.

            _Nudge_. Anxiousness.

            _Nudge_. Worry.

            _Nudge_. Encouragement.

            The TARDIS’ humanlike feelings teased at the edges of my mind even as the smoky tendrils from the Acumen returned, poking out of the glowing fog like some creepy, semi-translucent octopus, pawing blindly at the air. It was strange, really, that a quasi-consciousness like that found in a Time Lord’s ship, could send out a mental awareness that resonated so well with human emotions, and yet, since I’d fully bonded with the TARDIS I’d stopped questioning that fact. The TARDIS was linked to the Doctor through some sort of Time Lord Physics which he had, to be fair, tried to explain to me at some point; however, like most things the Doctor explained, after a while I had stopped listening halfway though and just accepted it as incomprehensible reality.

            I felt comforted by the TARDIS’ presence in my head, but the feeling was dimmed by the growing reality of my physical discomfort. There was power running through my veins that I imagined must feel like—well, I’d never been struck by lightning, but the hot, intense flash of electricity that was surging through every part of me was somehow reminiscent of that sensation.

            My very skin burned, and when I glanced down at my body I was vaguely startled at the soft golden glow emanating from every bare surface. The light coming from somewhere inside me should probably have been terrifying—after all it’s not as if it’s in a human’s nature to suddenly make like a glow worm—but it wasn’t.

            Behind me there was abruptly a cold sensation, like a harsh breeze had suddenly whipped up, and I turned slowly to see what was there. Ragalagh stood behind me, looking the same as he had on the physical plane, only now he was surrounded by long tendrils of blue smoke. The Acumen hovered around Ragalagh like a cloak, or a ghost, not quite touching, but still very much _there_. The acuite soldier’s eye’s still glowed neon blue, and right now his gaze had locked scornfully on mine.

            “ _Whatever it is you were trying to accomplish, human_ ,” he began in the Acumen’s echoing voice, “ _We thank you. You have opened the gate to an unending field of the New_.” His body flickered slightly, and then solidified, before moving toward where I stood. The feeling of cold intensified and the waves of blue smoke stretched up into the air and hovered around me like reaching tentacles.

            **“I will give you one chance to turn away.”**

The words came out of my mouth with their own sense of foreign familiarity, as if they were both mine and not of this world. Something about the sound of my own voice just now tickled at a memory deeply suppressed.

            Ragalagh laughed harshly, and gestured at our glittering surroundings. “ _You have no authority to give Us orders, human. Your consciousness is absorbed by Us. We control your thoughts now, there shall be no more hiding…_ ”

            The smoky tendrils dove gracefully through the air to wrap around my limbs and torso, binding themselves around my skin as tightly as if they were made of leather.

            “ _You seek to overwhelm Us with the quantity of the Time Vortex_ …” the hissing non-voice came again, this time twisting sinuously around me from Elsewhere, as Ragalagh’s mouth wasn’t moving. “ _It will not work. We glory in the knowledge to be found there_ … _We will rise to become the only being with True Understanding_ …”

A tiny shock zinged though the back of my head at these words. The Doctor had warned me that the Acumen would know our thoughts as soon as we gave rise to them, but I had honestly thought it wouldn’t matter once I made the connection to the Vortex. Apparently that hadn’t held true.

**“You are _foolish_ …”** I heard myself retort coldly, somehow not feeling the appropriate concern over the tightening clamps the Acumen had attached to my body. **“You may be a sentient being, but laying claim to the sparks of life does not give you the right to pillage knowledge from any creature you deem less worthy than yourself!”** The chastisement was clear in my voice, the same odd assurance ringing through every word.

Cold laughter echoed around me now, strained, but cruel nonetheless. “ _And you seek to place yourself above Us?_ ” The question was seeped in incredulous mirth. “ _You are nothing_!”

**“I am _everything_!”** I snapped back, anger and arrogance thick in the voice that wasn’t my own.

The last word I’d shouted echoed around the pair of us with a ring of authority that would have sent my feet stumbling back if I’d been a casual observer. Across from me, Ragalagh’s body trembled the faintest bit; and around me the gripping smoke seemed to loosen for a fraction of a second. With no warning, words began to pour from my lips as if someone else had taken control.

**“I am _everywhere_! I AM _ALWAYS_!” **

The words punctured the golden storm like bullets, sending shimmering waves though the mist as they appeared, physically scrolling across the air as I shouted, then fading into oblivion once more.

            My skin was on fire now, glaring golden light flaring out from my fingertips, my arms, my face…blazing from my eyes. There was no turning back now. This, as the Doctor had said, was all or nothing, and if we wanted even the slimmest chance of winning this fight I had to completely give over to the Consciousness that had once gripped me, so long ago.

            **“I am the Bad Wolf…”** came calmly from my lips, and the storm around us intensified. **“I see all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be…”**

            “ _And through you, so too will we_ …” the Acumen hissed, sounding slightly more agitated than before. “ _We are feeding on your thoughts even now… And your mind is_ burning _. It has been damaged from your struggle. You are not strong enough to hold Us back_ … _Let go… and your death will be merciful_ …”

            **“I desire not to restrain you…”** Bad Wolf spoke slowly, and the words only halfway surprised me as I heard myself speak them. **“Only to warn you that no being is meant to weld this power. As you said, this body is slowly burning from within, that is the sacrifice I am willing to make…”**

            “ _You seek to deceive_!” the Acumen hissed vehemently back, its voice harsh as a north wind. “ _You think your claims on this pathway to knowledge are the only viable ones? We will not be tricked so easily_!”

            Somewhere in the back of my head the consciousness that was still my own, still Rose Tyler from a tiny apartment in London, with a mother who waited every day for the wheezing sound of a blue box to announce the safe return of her daughter, who had wanted an out from her boring, normal, everyday life, and who had seen and experienced so much… somewhere that tiny spark flickered in fear. Taking on the persona of Bad Wolf again as the Vortex ran through a mind so thoroughly damaged as my own had as much as signed my own death certificate.

            Suddenly I felt very lost and alone.

            The Acumen was correct about one thing; despite the tiny fractures that I was starting to sense in it as the Acumen fought back against Bad Wolf, my human body and mind were not strong enough to maintain a link with the Time Vortex for much longer. If I didn’t let go soon there would be no point in keeping on fighting: I’d be dead, my brain fried if nothing worse, and who knew what would happen to the Doctor. Abruptly everything in me seized with an intense and white-hot pain. I gasped, and nearly fell to my knees.

            _Doctor!!_

            **_You can do this, Rose. The burden is not yours alone this time._**

            The words swam through my mind slowly, and it took me a moment before the fogginess fell away enough for me to realize that the Doctor had really spoken to me. My body shuddered again and I cried out, dropping to one knee as somewhere near me Ragalagh let out a cold laugh.

            _I can’t_ … I cried out mentally, the anguish inside me pouring out into my words. _Doctor, it hurts…!_

            **_Let me through, Rose. You’ve created a barrier._** The Doctor’s voice was tense but insistent, pushing at the fragile edges of my mind in a frantic yet restrained manner. He was desperate to connect with me, knowing that if I was to have any chance to survive we needed to be linked, but also understanding that he could well be the one to kill me if I couldn’t handle letting him in with everything else I was struggling to fight at the same time.

            The pain in my head throbbed violently once more and a scream of agony wrenched itself from my raw throat. The Acumen’s grip on me tightened, seeming to gain more physicality with every painful beat of my heart.

            “ _Give in_ ….” It crooned, cinching its tendrils around my limbs until it felt as if all my senses had been cut off.

            Refusing to give up I continued to struggle weakly, searching desperately through the fog of my own head for a way to let the Doctor in.

            _Doctor… help me…_

I could feel the blackness of unconsciousness starting to bleed in at the edges of my vision, and it became a battle in itself just to hold my head up. _No_. I thought dully, my thought sounding far away, faded compared to the battle cry of Bad Wolf, but no less in its own fierceness. _No! I won’t give in! Doctor, please… I need you!_

            With what felt like the very last vestiges of my strength I reached blindly into the void and groped wildly for anything that might feel like a Time Lord consciousness. It was like fumbling around in a dark room, unable to find a wall or an exit and yet feeling like at any second I was going to run face-first into a set of bricks. Tension coiled in my mental body, overlaid with anxiousness and fear, and then, with no warning, the floor dropped away and I plunged into an unending oblivion.

**~OOO~**

            Something caught my hand and jerked my descending body to a halt mid-fall—or the equivalent of that anyway. The Doctor’s presence in my head ought to have been too much— I was already stretched to the mental breaking point as I fought to hold onto Bad Wolf and keep out the Acumen—but, strangely, it wasn’t. It was warm, and solid and comforting; and instead of pushing me over the edge it hulled me back from it, steadying me and centering my focus.

I blinked, finding the blackness that had been steadily creeping in around my vision abruptly gone and the glittering gale back in place. Only this time I wasn’t alone in the eye of the storm, facing down Ragalagh and the Acumen.

            I could sense without turning that the Doctor now stood stoically next to me, his pinstripe suit immaculate and his brown eyes hard as he stared across at our enemies. But I looked anyway.

            **“Doctor, you are here.”**  

            “Yes, Rose, I’m here.”

            He pointedly addressed _me_ , not Bad Wolf, and my cold fingers were suddenly engulfed in the warm and reassuring grip of his own as he helped me back to my feet. I could feel the Acumen’s presence pressing on all sides, trying to find a crack in my mental shielding, but I felt stronger with the Doctor next me, and the howl of the Acumen’s rage had been muted slightly.

            “ _You cannot hold Us back much longer, human..._ ” the Acumen hissed, and the pressure in the air around both me and the Doctor crackled with something akin to electricity.

            **“You are not strong enough to possess this power…”** Bad Wolf took control of my lips once more, and I could see the blazing golden light pouring from my eyes reflected in the Doctor’s own as he moved to stand in front of me, placing his body between Ragalagh and the Acumen and myself, though he didn’t so much as blink.

            The next moments would be pivotal. I could feel the power rising within me like the swelling of a tsunami, higher and higher, seconds away from crashing down and annihilating everything in its path, me and the Doctor notwithstanding. The twining blue smoke that wrapped around me had started to wind around the Doctor now too, and yet he didn’t move from his place between the Acumen and Bad Wolf.

            **“Doctor, you must move now.”**

            “No.”

            I should have expected nothing less from him, especially considering the amount of danger I was placing myself in, but that didn’t stop me from fighting to save him.

            **“Your Time Lord genetics will not save you this time!”** Bad Wolf informed the Doctor harshly, and I could see in his eyes that he knew this, that he knew that if he didn’t leave now he would die, and that he still wouldn’t go.

            “I know, Rose,” was all he said in response, and squeezed my fingers gently.

            _Doctor!_ The word was a broken sob in the back of my head, even as Bad Wolf continued to stare impassively at the Doctor. The Acumen had wound itself as tightly around the Doctor as it had my own body now, and the smoky tendrils had begun to glow the sickly colour of chemical waste. I wanted to stop this. It was inexpressibly selfish of me, but I would have given up everything, let worlds burn and civilizations be destroyed, just to save the one man standing in front of me. And yet, it was because of him that I knew I couldn’t let myself give in to that temptation.

**“You have been warned!”** As the words passed my lips with a shout of authority, I felt the pulse of the Vortex swell in my chest, followed immediately by my entire body seizing up. The Acumen exploded toward me at the same moment, and now both the Doctor across from me, and Ragalagh behind him, were flung into the air, as reality as we knew it exploded.

The same invasive spikes of pain drove into my brain, and I knew that the Acumen was trying to find a way to absorb Bad Wolf, to figure out how to access the Time Vortex and somehow weave those constructs into the recesses of its own makeup; but this time it was different. It wasn’t that the pain was any less than it had been before, but the access to my memories was blocked off.

A scream ripped from my throat, a tangle of anguish and terror, but also rage and determination. I would _not_ give up this time. I would _not_ allow the Doctor to be hurt. Every cell, every fiber of my being felt like it was on fire, like it was burning in acid, and yet I refused to let go. I would let Bad Wolf burn me to a cinder before I stopped fighting back.

**~OOO~**

**_Rose…_ **

That voice…!

            The place where our essences clashed was a nether space, both _in_ reality and outside of it, but no less real for its wavering existence. The Acumen was struggling, vicious and single-minded in its quest, fighting for dominance and gaining…millimeter by millimeter…

            **_Rose!_**

            Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard him. The Doctor was calling to me, anchoring me in the chaos. Bad Wolf was still throwing everything she had at the Acumen, and I could feel the current of the Vortex channeling its power through my brain like a drilling tornado, burning my consciousness to ashes as it went…

            **_Don’t give up, Rose. You’re stronger than this! You can do this!_**

            I was so tired though. So very tired, and young, and just… human.

            There was a silence then, if that concept could be said to exist within the raging battle of wills that was happening all around. Then came three words that pierced through the melee…

            **_I need you._**

            It would be lying to say that everything stopped in that moment, but those words sliced through the fire in my mind and echoed in my head, over and over.

            I need you. I need you. I need you….

            “I need you too, Doctor.”

            When the sound of my own voice passed my lips it was as if a veil was lifted and the sound turned back up on the room. My eyes were suddenly able to see properly, and my body felt light, as if I’d thrown off a great weight.

            The atmosphere around me still flickered, but I could suddenly see the Doctor again. He was standing in front of me, his head slightly bowed and his eyes closed, but his expression was serene. I glanced around when a warmth registered in my mind, and it was then that I realized the Doctor’s hands were pressed against the sides of my head; his palms rested against my cheeks and two fingertips pressed against my temples on either side of my face. His face was a masque of concentration, still and focused, as he maintained the Connection with my mind. It was this, I now realized, that had saved me from completely burning out when the battle of wills had initially started. Even now, the sensation of agony and searing heat was lessoning in the back of my mind, and I understood that it was the Doctor who was causing that somehow.

            _Doctor?_ His name was a question and a cry of relief at the same time, and I reached up to grab hold of his wrists, trying to tug his hands free as the pain in my head seeped away to nothingness. I wanted to thank him, to tell him that, somehow, he’d managed to protect me from the Acumen’s attack this time, but he would not be moved.

            I felt a frown of confusion come over my face, and it was then that I felt the tension in the way the Doctor was holding his body. His hands gripped my head solidly, holding me still, though a faint tremor ran over his skin from the effort. A crease had formed between his eyebrows and his lips tightened into a thin line.

            “No!” The word exploded from my lips like a battle cry. “No! Stop it! _Stop it_!!” I yanked at the Doctor’s wrists again, but I might as well have been tugging at stone for all the good it did. Not that that stopped me from trying over and over again to break the connection between the pair of us, because I’d just understood what the Doctor was _really_ doing. Tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked furiously as I tried to twist my head away from the Doctor’s unbreakable grip. “Don’t you dare! Jus’ don’t you even dare, Doctor!”

            **_I have to Rose._** The words in my head froze my frantic movements for a few precious seconds, and my eyes snapped up to the Doctor’s face. **_I’m so grateful for your strength and determination, you’ve brought us so far…but you need to let me do it from here._**

            “But you’ll die….” The words were a sob as my fingers stopped clawing at the Doctor’s hands and instead clung tightly to them. “Or worse…”

            A battle of the minds was one thing, but I wasn’t a fool, I had seen how the Doctor had been losing the fight back in the Sanctuary. I could feel all the energy draining out of me. I’d been willing to sacrifice myself if it meant that the Doctor would continue to live, continue to save and protect others, and do so much good in the worlds that he visited, but after all that he was  just going to throw it all away in an act of martyrdom?

            “Don’t do this, Doctor,” I pleaded, squeezing my eyes shut as if somehow that could hold back the Doctor’s mental link. “Please… we’ve only just found each other again!”

            There was silence from the Doctor, and I could sense through the bond that he didn’t want to lie to me and tell me that my fears were unfounded. A sound broke past his determined expression just then, a small, yet shuddering, grunt of pain, before he was able to clamp his lips back together. My hands flew from his wrists to clutch at the Doctor’s face at this tiny crack in his armor, and I was abruptly aware of the way he was struggling to breathe normally, to pretend that he wasn’t in nearly unbearable pain. Because, despite his outward appearance, I knew exactly how he must be feeling, since up until a few minutes ago that had been my own burden.

            Something strange happened when I touched him though. My reaction had been purely instinct, yet the moment my fingertips grazed the Doctor’s temples his body gave a shudder, and then… seemed to relax.

            _Doctor?!_ My voice was panicked and tense, but insistent as I pushed into his consciousness in a final desperate act. _What happened? Are you alright_?

            **_I… I think I am…!_** The Doctor’s answering thought was confused and a little surprised, like he’d been thrown off kilter and the result was pleasing but completely unexpected. His next words were hesitant. **_What... did you do… Rose_**?

            I didn’t answer at first, because I honestly didn’t know. I could feel the Doctor’s mind relaxing more the longer I touched his face; it was as if contact with me soothed the raging tempest in his head, which, I realized, had to be the truth. Because hadn’t he just done the same thing to me?

            I could feel an echo of the pain from the Acumen start up again, a ghost of the original attack reviving as I took back part of the burden from the Doctor’s head through basis of my touch. But it was manageable, somehow, and I found that I was able to think clearly now, unlike before.

            _Look at me, Doctor,_ I murmured, and after long seconds he blinked open his eyes. There was wonder in their brown depths as the Doctor’s eyes met mine, and I moved closer to him so that he had to bend his head down slightly to keep holding my gaze. _Don’t you realize what’s happening yet?_

            I could sense him thinking frantically, trying to decipher what had just occurred to me. It didn’t take him long, and a wide grin split his face. **_Why look at you, Rose Tyler…_** he murmured lowly, the words teasing my mind in a mental caress. **_And I always claimed to be the clever one… I stand corrected._**

I felt a smile tug at my own lips at the Doctor’s silent banter, and responded by gently sliding my fingers over his temples again. The Doctor’s body twitched at my touch and he moved even closer, so that our bodies were pressed up right against each other. Inwardly, I could feel the weight pressing at the shields of my mind lessoning, the longer the pair of us had mental contact. The Acumen now felt much like a rushing wind, but even that seemed to be diminishing. The prickling at the corners of my mind now felt like the fading annoyance of pins and needles… nearly gone.

The Doctor was very, very close to me now, and I could sense that he was experiencing the same lessoning sensations in his own head. I wondered how I hadn’t thought about this course of action sooner. The Doctor had been correct in knowing that I was the only one who could call the heart of the TARDIS up again, having done it twice before—despite not being a Time Lord, the heartbeat of the TARDIS was aligned with mine by now—but he was the only one who could hold out long enough to channel the power of the Time Vortex without dying… at least outright, like I had almost succumbed to. But neither of us could do it alone.

Pushing up on my toes I reached toward the Doctor’s face and tugged his head down so that I could brush my lips against his. He responded immediately, instinctively, deepening the kiss as his fingers tightened against my head.

 

Pulling back slightly, I met the eyes of the only man in the Universe who I would have died to protect, and murmured, “United we stand, divided we fall. That was the key all along, wasn’t it?”

The Doctor was looking down at me, wonder shining in his dark eyes. “Balance,” he murmured, his eyes never leaving my face. “That was the only way out there ever could be...” 

Suddenly, a blood-curdling shriek of mixed agony and utter, devastating, rage, ripped through the air behind us. I was so startled that I nearly lost my grip on the Doctor’s head, but he’d reacted instantly at the sound and pulled me hard against his chest, anticipating my flinch milliseconds in advance and managing to counteract it just in time. We both turned carefully to see where the sound had come from, and saw, to mutual surprise, Ragalagh sprawled on the ground—for lack of a more corporeal term, of the glittering nether-sphere we were grouped in. The slithering, glowing, blue tentacles of light that constituted the Acumen were writhing about his body, seemingly causing him immense pain.

I stared, transfixed, as Ragalagh curled in on himself, clawing at the Acumen’s ethereal form, trying to push it off his limbs and torso with increasing terror. The harder and more frantically he attempted to twist away, the tighter the Acumen seemed to grip him, wringing howls of anguish from his tormented throat.

“It’s killing him…” I whispered, unable to look away, and felt my own throat tighten as my eyes burned suspiciously.

“Yes,” the Doctor concurred lowly, his voice quiet, but with the faintest trace of pity. “No honor among thieves, as they say.”

Together we watched as the Acumen covered over Ragalagh’s body until it was no longer visible, and then, in a firework of light, exploded out of existence.

“ _We have not given up…_ ” came a faint hiss from out of the echoing silence following Ragalagh’s death. “ _You have not defeated Us!_ ” The Acumen’s voice was thin as paper, brittle as a sheen of new ice, and yet still relentless in its defiance of reality.

The Doctor’s face twisted, hardening as he stared coldly at the place where Ragalagh’s body had been. “It’s over,” he said, his voice flat and beggaring no argument. “We’ve won. Now leave this place!”

“ _We shall not give in to a human… to a Time Lord…_ ” the Acumen hissed, petulance in every syllable. “ _You cannot beat Us_!”

“Defeated henchmen, demolished temple… yup, I’d say ‘beaten’ is an accurate description for your current state.”

I blinked, looking around more closely at the sound of the quip tripping lightly off the Doctor’s tongue. The glittering storm had vanished. We were back in the Sanctuary once more, only it was a mere echo of the grandeur it had once proclaimed. The massive wooden doors had been blasted apart, now hanging off their hinges, their boards splintered and singed. The pedestal where the Acumen had first held court had exploded into rubble, which now lay scattered across the wide expanse of the Sanctuary floor. And the walls of the great stone room looked as if someone had taken a wrecking ball to them. Huge chunks of rock lay smashed on the floor, leaving the walls half standing, looking like the after-effects of level-seven earthquake. The pair of us stood in the center of the room, still clasping each other’s faces, and the Acumen hovered in a corner, a dimly glowing mist above a scattering of what looked like charred bones.

 I gazed around the space in amazement. “What happened here?”

My question had been mostly rhetorical, but the Doctor answered anyway. “You happened.”

Surprise washed over me and I stepped back from him in shock, jerking my hands quickly away from the Doctor’s head, as if subconsciously worried I might blast him apart too if I kept touching him. The second I lost contact with the Doctor’s skin my eyes shot to his in alarm, my body already lurching back toward him in a panic.

The Doctor had apparently expected this reaction because he swiftly caught my reaching hands in his own, wrapping his long fingers smoothly over mine and drawing me gently up against his side. “More aptly, I should say, Bad Wolf happened,” he corrected himself, looking the tiniest bit abashed. “All that power wasn’t just swirling about nowhere, you know. Once summoned, the Vortex couldn’t be fully contained, no matter what vessel it was using; it jettisoned out, breaking down the reality around it. But it’s over now, Rose. You don’t have to worry about maintaining the connection anymore.” He smiled faintly, exhaustion creasing the lines of his eyes.

I stared around the destroyed Sanctuary a second time, realizing that the Vortex was indeed gone, vanished as if it had never existed. Except… except for the faintest hint of a glow hovering around the Doctor, a dusting of glittering light that seemed to cling to his skin like a scattering of sand. Frowning, I tried to brush it away. It didn’t budge.

“The Acumen—” I began, my gaze flickering between the faintly wavering smoke across the room and the Doctor’s face.

 “The Acumen would never be able to handle the Vortex,” the Doctor cut in. “Just being in the same vicinity as it was taxing it.”

“But it was so strong!” I couldn’t help protesting. “Even channeling the Vortex didn’t seem to hold it back from me. I wasn’t strong enough—” My eyes blurred and I blinked back tears. It still didn’t feel real. It still felt as if one wrong step would send our entire world crumbling beneath our feet.

“Rose,” And my name in the Doctor’s mouth was so tender it made my heart ache. “You were never supposed to be strong enough. But don’t for a single second think that that makes you weak.”

I pulled my hands free of the Doctor’s grip to rub viciously at my eyes, trying to regain control before he went on.

“Rose, you have the strongest mind of anyone I’ve ever met—and that includes many a Time Lord and Lady. But alone there is no one, not even Rassilon himself, who could channel the Time Vortex and live. You’ve seen that for yourself not so long ago…”

His gentle reminder wasn’t meant to sting, but it did. A dull ache still throbbed in the back of my heart when I thought of the first face I’d known belonging to the man before me. He’d freely and willingly sacrificed one of his lives for me when he’d done just that, taking the full context of the Vortex into his being.

“The only reason either of us survived today was because we managed to share the burden of an impossible task. Together, Rose, a partnership.”

The Doctor’s face was both earnest and gentle, and I finally understood. Equality had always been the nature of our relationship, and it had been the key to our triumphing over an unconquerable foe.

“A partnership…” I agreed. And then I heard myself sigh, long and soft, like weariness made verbal, and my body slumped against the Doctor’s chest, blackness dropping over my eyes like a curtain, and it was only the Doctor’s honed reflexes that saved me from dropping like a lead weight onto the Sanctuary floor.

**~OOO~**

            It was warm where I lay, curled up in a soft place with a gentle, rhythmic _thump-thump_ beating in the background. I murmured and shifted position, my hand reaching out to pull the warmth closer somehow, but my fingers caught against something smooth, yet distinct, and my eyes blinked open.

            There was a fire flickering in a grate near where I lay, but the flames were blocked by long legs sheathed in a brown, pinstripe material. My gaze slowly travelled up the legs, from the converse shoes on their ends, up over the bottom of a suit jacket, to a shirt with a loosened tie, and finally to a face, smooth and relaxed in sleep, crowned with a shock of thick brown hair. The Doctor lay on his bed, his long form stretched out on top of the covers I now realized I’d been nestled beneath, though he had one arm curled protectively around my body, which was tucked against his side. My head had been resting against his chest which is why I’d woken to the sound of his hearts beating.

            I looked slowly about the room, feeling confused. We were back in the TARDIS. But hadn’t we just seconds ago been standing in the decimated Sanctuary, listening to the remains of the Acumen hiss threats from across the room?

            I looked back up at the Doctor’s face and found, with a small start, that he was awake and watching me, though I’d been certain he’d been in a deep sleep only moments before. “Doctor? What happened? The Acumen—? The Sanctuary—? Why are we in the TARDIS?” The questions poured out of me so fast I could barely get my lips around them, and the Doctor’s face changed from sleepy to awake like the flick of a switch.

            He sat up slowly, drawing my frantic body up next to him as he met my eyes solemnly. “It’s ok, Rose. You’re safe. Yes, we’re back in the TARDIS.”

            “But when—?” I began, and the Doctor hurried on, his calm voice soothing the panic in my eyes.

            “The TARDIS left the mountain a couple of hours ago. You fainted in the Sanctuary and I carried you back here to rest. We _both_ needed to recuperate,” he added, seeing the faint flush of shame creep across my cheeks, rightly deducing that—despite his insistence that I wasn’t weak, he hadn’t been the one to collapse at the end of an epic fight—I was embarrassed.

            “Your face,” I said suddenly, recalling the flickers of glittering light that had clung to the Doctor’s skin just before I’d passed out in the Sanctuary.

            The Doctor frowned slightly. “Same face, Rose. I’m sure! I mean, I think it is, unless the Vortex gave me a new nose, or tweaked my ears or something, Time Energy can be a tricky thing—” He broke off at the look on my face. “What?”

            “You look the same,” I assured him, “but that’s the strange thing.”

            “Strange? I thought you liked this face; you weren’t angling for an upgrade back at the Sanctuary were you?” He was teasing, trying to lighten the mood, but I pushed on, my chest tightening as my eyes searched every inch of his skin that I could see.

            “You were, I don’t know, covered in a sort of ‘glitter’ back at the Sanctuary, Doctor. I thought that maybe you were—t-that after everything, you might still—”

            And then his eyes cleared with understanding. “Ah… nothing to worry about, Rose. What you saw was just the remains of Time Energy. We were in the Vortex for so long that we were both covered in it. You were too busy fainting to notice your own sparkle, I suppose.” His eyes were dancing but I frowned back at him.

            “It’s gone now,” I stated, peering at him again.

            “Yes,” the Doctor agreed. “It fades with time. We have been home for a few hours now, as I mentioned.” He smiled and I started to smile back in relief, before a sudden, more important thought gripped me.

            “The Acumen,” I pressed on, needing to know, for his sake if not my own, that it was really over. “It was still alive. It crushed the life out of Ragalagh but it was still there, Doctor. It still wanted to fight!”

            “Yes, it’s still there. But the Acumen is no longer a threat, Rose. The Vortex destroyed all its acolytes and left its temple in ruins. With no one left for it use as a conduit the Acumen is powerless.”

            “But someone could happen by like we did!” I protested. “Is it really safe to just leave it there? What if some other—?” I broke off just before the words “some other Time Lord” passed my lips, and quickly looked away from the Doctor’s face. If he knew what I’d nearly said he didn’t show it.

            “I’ve programed the coordinates of the Sanctuary into the TARDIS; the Acumen is tethered there, but if anyone comes within a hundred light years of its location I’ll be warned about it and can swing by to make sure nothing happens. It’s over, Rose. I promise you, we’ve won.”

            I could feel a warmth spreading through my body at these words that had nothing to do with the many blankets I was swaddled in, or the embrace of the Doctor’s arms. It really was over.

            “I can’t believe it…” I said slowly, feeling a smile break across my face. “We survived…”

            “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” the Doctor said with his own fond grin. “If there’s one thing I believe in, it’s you, Rose Tyler.” And as these words left his lips, the Doctor’s arms came up and pulled me closer against his chest, one hand cradling my head as he ducked his own down and pressed his mouth against mine, drawing me into a heated kiss.

            I murmured happily against his lips as the Doctor shifted on the bed, pulling the blankets back so that he could press his body closer to me. I felt one of his hands slip neatly under my shirt and skim across the bare skin of my back, and automatically reached my own hands up to the buttons of his shirt. I wasn’t nervous this time. This time we were celebrating our own miraculous lives and making love to each other was the deepest expression of that existence.

            I was home now. It hadn’t been lost on me, despite everything, that the Doctor had used that word in relation to not just the TARDIS, but to the pair of us being there inside it. And this realization sent a rush of love washing over me that burned away the last vestiges of shock and fear from for our showdown with the Acumen. Yes, I was home now, and I’d never leave again.

**~Fin~**

**And this, friends, was the FINAL chapter. I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did and that it wrapped up ok. :) I’m working on a new fic (Amy/11) that I’ll hopefully have the start of posted in the next couple of weeks. Perhaps you’d like to take a look at that if you think you might miss my writing? Subscribe to my ‘follow author’ list to make sure you’re notified when it’s published. I’ll certainly miss all your wonderful reviews threating bodily harm if the next chapter wasn’t posted “yesterday”! Haha! I continue to write because of you all; I hope you know that! Much love to everyone! :)**

**P.S. On a random note, can someone tell me why, when I c &p my work into the posting box, some of my tabs/indents show up at the start of new paragraphs and in other places in the same work they suddenly don't? Also, how can I fix this? Thanks!**


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